Cholera death toll rises in hurricane-hit Haiti

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Leogane bore the brunt of Hurricane Tomas rainfall

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• Hurricane flood hits west Haiti
• In pictures: Hurricane impact on Haiti
• Eyewitness: Tense evacuations

The death toll from the current cholera epidemic in Haiti has exceeded 500, the country's health ministry has said.

Fifty-nine people had died up until and including Thursday, and 617 others had been infected, bringing the total affected to 7,359, the ministry added.

The news came as the local authorities and relief agencies attempted to get clean drinking water to those areas worse affected by Hurricane Tomas.

The storm caused flooding and left eight people dead in western Haiti.

The charity, Save the Children, said that in Leogane, the streets had been turned into "rivers" and some 35,000 people had been affected.

Analysis

Laura Trevelyan BBC News, Leogane

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The UN estimates 15,000 people in Leogane have been affected by the floods.

Amercie lost her home when January's earthquake flattened this small town west of Port Au Prince. And now her tent has been flooded because the river burst its banks.

The mother-of-three is sitting opposite Leogane's cemetery, where family tombs lie on their sides, cracked in two by the quake, now surrounded by water.

Amercie is worried the combination of dead bodies and stagnant water from the flooding could spread the cholera outbreak to here, where so far no cases have been reported.

Next to Amercie, Jean Pierre, a farmer who just planted what he hoped would be a new crop of banana trees and yams, says the flood has washed away his plantation.

His childhood home collapsed in January's quake; the house he built afterwards has just flooded. No-one is helping, he says angrily.

As we leave, the sun has come out and the flood waters are receding. The market is open, and the merchants are selling fruit and vegetables, trying to make a living as best they can.

The BBC's Laura Trevelyan in the town said the water reached her knees, and that people were afraid of the risk of disease.

There was also flooding in Les Cayes, Jacmel and Gonaives, while many mountain towns have been cut off by flooded roads and landslides.

'Additional risk'

There was widespread relief on Friday after Hurricane Tomas passed without destroying the tented camps in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince, housing about 1.3 million survivors of January's earthquake.

However, attention soon turned to preventing the spread of cholera, which is caused by bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or food, in the unsanitary conditions.

Cholera causes diarrhoea and vomiting, leading to severe dehydration, but can kill quickly. It is treated easily through rehydration and antibiotics.

A spokesman for the Pan-American Health Organisation, Christian Lindmeier, told the Reuters news agency: "Cholera is a water-borne disease and so additional water means additional risk."

"We do expect the infection rate to jump up due to the flooding and to the bad sanitation conditions in many areas," he said.

In the town of Saint Marc, in the northern region where the outbreak began three weeks ago, a Cuban doctor in charge of the local hospital said there had been more cases of cholera since the hurricane.

Cholera

• Intestinal infection caused by bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or food
• Source of contamination usually faeces of infected people
• Causes diarrhoea, vomiting, severe dehydration, and can kill quickly
• Easily treated with antibiotics; not usually fatal

• BBC Health: Cholera
• Cholera 'difficult to predict'

 

 

"The situation here - after the storm - has worsened," Dr Buenaventura Sanchez told the Associated Press.

"We are seeing higher numbers [of cases] than in the days before, and we are also seeing cases of cholera with typhoid fever at the same time."

Like cholera, typhoid is caught by consuming contaminated food or drink that has been handled by an infected person, or if contaminated sewage gets into water used for drinking or washing food. It can also be fatal if not treated.

Gary Shaye, the country director of Save the Children, said thousands of children in Leogane were now at increased risk of diarrhoeal diseases.

On Friday, Haiti's government and the United Nations appealed to donors for nearly $19m to cover urgent humanitarian needs.

‘We come out to protest police brutality and what happens? We get a police state!’

November 7, 2010

We demand the immediate release of all those arrested on Nov. 5 and that all charges are dismissed

by the Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant

Protesters face a police blockade. – Photo: Felix Barrett, Indybay & revcom.us

The Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant (ONYX Organizing Committee, The New Years Movement, The General Assembly for Justice for Oscar Grant) condemns the activity of the Oakland Police Department leading up to, during and following the rally held on Nov. 5, 2010, in response to the sentencing of Johannes Mehserle for the murder of Oscar Grant III.

 

While the city publicly claimed it had learned lessons from July 8 and would not militarize downtown Oakland or create a climate of fear and intimidation on Nov. 5, they privately constructed an all-out military strategy to intimidate and control the people.

Police agencies from at least nine different counties, along with Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA and DOJ descended upon Oakland. As people gathered to peacefully assemble, they had to wade through rows of police just to get to the City Hall Plaza. This in itself set a tone of anger for the people as they had just learned that Johannes Mehserle would only serve about seven months in prison for the cold-blooded murder of Oscar Grant.

Police agencies from at least nine different counties, along with Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA and DOJ descended upon Oakland.

Following almost five hours of peaceful protesting, about 300 people decided to march to the Fruitvale BART Station, the location of the murder of Grant on Jan. 1, 2009. Instead of facilitating the march in a productive and peaceful manner, the police chose to immediately respond with tactical and strategic repression of the people’s will and rights. The encroachment of the police on to the marchers further fueled the flame of an ignited community and led to an unnecessary confrontation on the streets of Oakland.

Shortly after the march started, about 200 protestors were cornered on the block of East 17th Street and Sixth Avenue. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) attempted to contact city officials and negotiate with the police to release the people with no arrests.

And even though word came that Police Chief Batts had agreed to give an order to release the crowd, moments later the arrests began.

As caught on video (posted below) by Youth Radio, one young woman stood before a line of militarized police and shouted: “We come out to protest police brutality and what happens? We get a police state!”

Police officers refused to talk to representatives from the NLG and indeed were hostile. Negotiating with these representatives from the rally could have further diffused activity on the streets of Oakland, but the police were intent on creating a situation that would then allow them to demonize the people and remove the focus from the unjust, unfair and outright farce of a sentence received by Johannes Mehserle.

The police were intent on creating a situation that would then allow them to demonize the people and remove the focus from the unjust, unfair and outright farce of a sentence received by Johannes Mehserle.

Additionally, Chief Batts has been quoted as saying that the police expected protestors to march to Li’l Bobby Hutton (DeFremery) Park but organizers were told explicitly that roads to the park would be blocked by police barricades. The police in effect set the stage for their repressive activity to make a point to any other community members intent on making their voices heard in dissent to the system.

The Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant stands in solidarity with the people arrested on Nov. 5 and we stand firm in our belief that the people have a right to assemble, a right to demonstrate, a right to march and a right to take a stand against a system that continuously oppresses, brutalizes and murders them.

We demand the immediate release of all those arrested on Nov. 5 and that all charges are dismissed.

The Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant can be reached at artisticintentions@yahoo.com. Bay View staff contributed to this report.

youthradio | Nov. 5, 2010

After the peaceful rally in Frank Ogawa Plaza, a march headed to the Fruitvale BART station gets interrupted on International Boulevard as police block off the streets. Police and protesters then began a game of cat and mouse in East Oakland where police finally surround protesters on Sixth Avenue and East 17th Street. An estimated 150 protesters were then arrested.

Related Posts

• Oakland’s not for burning?
• Why liberal justice is not justice for Oscar Grant
• Community responds to Mehserle request for retrial in the shooting of Oscar Grant
• Politics makes strange bedfellows
• Pirone expected to take stand after delay in trial

Frank Furedi

Professor of Sociology at University of Kent, and author of Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating, Politics of Fear, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?, Therapy Culture, Paranoid Parenting and Culture of Fear.          

Five things I have learned
In BBC News Online's occasional series on key figures in education and family, sociologist and author Frank Furedi reveals the most important things he has learned in his life.

 

Name: Frank Furedi

Occupation: Professor of Sociology at University of Kent, and author of books including Paranoid Parenting, Politics of Fear, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?, Therapy Culture, Culture of Fear and Wasted: Why Education is not Educating

Education: BA in international relations at McGill University, Montreal, then studied African politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and received his doctorate from the University of Kent.

Lives: Faversham, Kent

Born: 1947, Budapest, Hungary

Family life: Married to Ann; says he is “attempting to father” his 15-year-old son, Jake

Unusual fact: A former student radical, in the 70s, he was the founder and chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

1. Listen - because you can learn from anybody.

I have learnt that it is a mistake not to listen to people, even people who you don’t take seriously, because those who appear ignorant can surprise you with their insights into life. Even if you disagree with what they say, through listening you can learn what it is that leads them to adopt an erroneous conclusion. That’s one way of learning about other people’s experiences and about life.

A genuine listening strategy is surprisingly difficult to acquire - but it is well worth the effort.

2. Question everything

This is one of the things I found most difficult to do. It’s very easy to fall back into old ways and repeat things you have done in the past. When I simply follow someone else’s opinion or unthinkingly repeat what I thought previously, I quite often end up realising that I’m on the wrong track. However, through questioning my beliefs and those of others it soon becomes evident that what worked yesterday may be inappropriate in a different context.

Moreover, it’s only in the course of questioning that you make progress in developing and refining your ideas. I have really come to appreciate Socrates. He was always annoying everyone by going to the market and asking questions. But those questions often led to greater clarity.

3. Rely on your intuition

We live in a world where we are bombarded by conflicting instructions through the media. As a father and a teacher I have been forced to rely on my intuition. I have learned to use my intuition even when people that I respect point me in a very different direction. Intuition is really your experience codified - insights gained through the working of your emotions and ideas. It doesn’t mean you are always right but it does put you in the right direction.

4. Always reflect on your motives when you are dealing with your children

Parents make big emotional investments in their children so that sometimes they confuse their own needs with those of their children. It is easy to overlook the fact that sometimes what we want for ourselves is not what our kids need.

There is so much pressure to live our lives through our children. That’s why we need to pause and have a reality check. We need to think about our motives by asking the question: “Am I doing this for them or for myself?” You may still end up doing something that meets your own needs rather than those of your child, but at least you will not be deluding yourself.

5. Things are never as bad as they seem.

This is something I learned later in life. I was a micro-manager, always meeting deadlines, imagining that everything that could go bad would go bad. It is only relatively recently that I learned that the situation is rarely as bad as you imagine. We have a tremendous capacity for resilience, for bouncing back and not allowing our disappointments to overwhelm us.

Often what happens depends on how we respond to a problem. We can make a drama out of a crisis and feel sorry for ourselves for the next 10 years or we can find a strategy for moving on and looking for new opportunities. Moving on, always moving on, has become one of the key principles guiding my daily life.

First published by BBC News Online, 26 September 2010

Watch Short Documentary – “Shadeism”

By Tambay, on November 5th, 2010

Courtesy of Racialicious… This short TV documentary explores the issue of Shadeism, the discrimination that exists between the lighter-skinned and darker-skinned members of the same community (a topic that’s been touched on previously on this blog). The short looks specifically at how it affects young women within the African, Caribbean, and South Asian Diasporas.

Video: Eyezon “Lord Hold Me”

November 5, 2010 Posted by: casperkatie

Homelessness. One of the biggest, and most underrated problems that exists in every country, regardless of economic status. Eyezon, born in Soweto, South Africa, and now residing in Cali, creates a mini documentary on homelessness in San Fransisco. Here, the video for Eyezon’s song “Lord Hold Me” explores the problem of homelessness, using mini documentary footage of life on the streets in San Fran, along with revealing startling facts and figures about the scale of this issue.   Eyezon also has recently dropped a new mixtape Yele ‘Ele (The Feeling), in which he talks about everything from love, moving from Soweto to BK, to paying tribute to the late great Dilla. Check out his track with Femi Kuti below.

“SORRY SORRY (Femi Kuti Remix)” by Eyezon

 

CONTEST

CWN 2010 SHORT STORY CONTEST GUIDELINES

 

DEADLINE: December 31, 2010

FEE: $10.00 per entry

1st Place - $200 / 2nd Place - $100 / 3rd Place - $50

Send THREE copies of each entry and your check to:

The Creative Writers Notebook, Short Story Contest,
7043 SE 173rd Arlington Loop, Lady Lake, FL 32162

• Length: up to 3000 words in any genre for adults/young adults (NO porn, picture books, or poetry).
• Format: Two cover pages (1st with name, address, phone, email, Title & word count; 2nd with Title and word count only - each short story copy sent must have one of these 2nd title sheets). Body of manuscript: 12 point Times Roman; Double-spaced; Title and page number at the top of EACH page (NO NAME).

NOTE: If your contest entry is chosen to appear in Journeys III, CWN will use only First North American Serial Rights to your story.

 

NOTE: You may enter more than one unpublished short story, but a $10.00 fee is required for each entry. If entries are submitted together one check for all entry fees is sufficient, i.e., 3 entries = $30.00.

 

After judging is completed, a list of the winners will be on our website, or you may email your request to mary.lois.sanders@att.net.

 

For complete Guidelines, email: mary.lois.sanders@att.net.

NEW Deadline: December 31, 2010

 

Fee: $10.00 per entry

 

1st Place - $200 / 2nd Place - $100 / 3rd Place $50

 

Chapbook Contest for Poets Under Forty

Submission Guidelines

• Send TWO copies of your manuscript.
• The manuscript must be postmarked no later than December, 15, 2010. Authors must be under the age of forty on that date.
• The manuscript must be between 26 to 30 pages in length, 1 1/2-spaced lines.
• Manuscripts must be paginated (pages numbered in order).
• Include two title pages, one with full contact information, and one with the title only.
• Do not include your name anywhere in the manuscript, as it is important to us that these be blind submissions.
• Include an acknowledgments page listing previous publications of the poems.
• Include a table of contents page.
• Clip your manuscript using a butterfly clip. Do not use folders or any type of binding.
• Include a $15 reading fee, payable to Sixteen Rivers Press.
• Include an SASE for contest results.
• Send your manuscript to Sixteen Rivers Press, P.O. Box 640663, San Francisco, CA 94164-0663.
• Manuscripts cannot be returned. If you would like verification of receipt, please clip a stamped, self-addressed postcard to one copy of the manuscript.
• We reserve the right not to choose a winner, in which case all the entrants' fees will be returned.

 

Full-Length Manuscript Submissions

(Please note: Sixteen Rivers Press is a nonprofit, shared-work poetry collective. We are a regional press, and publish only San Francisco Bay Area Watershed authors).

REQUIREMENTS OF AUTHORS:

• Authors must become members of the collective and make a three-year commitment to it.
• Authors must live within the Bay Area and be able to attend one and often two monthly meetings.
• Authors will devote a minimum of ten hours per month to the collective in support of our publication schedule, and considerably more time when their own books are in production.
• Authors will agree to follow our consensus-based model of decision-making.
• Authors are responsible for doing the work of a publishing collective, including book design, production and publicity. Collective members are available to help teach these skills.
• Authors have the final decision on the look and contents of their own book.
• Authors receive no money from the sales of their books. Profits from sales go toward the publication of the next two authors selected by the press.
• Authors’ books will be published during the second year of their commitment. The third year is devoted to promoting their books and helping publish the next two authors selected by the press.
• Submission period is from November 1, 2010 to February 1, 2011.
• Manuscripts received outside that time interval will not be read.

MANUSCRIPT GUIDELINES:

Manuscripts that do not adhere to the following guidelines will not be considered.

• Send TWO copies of your manuscript.
• Manuscript must be postmarked no later than February 1, 2011.
• Manuscript must be between 65 and 80 pages in length, 1 1/2 spaced lines (NO single spaced poems).
• Manuscripts must be paginated (pages numbered in order).
• Manuscript must include a title page without your name and address.
• Manuscript must include an acknowledgments page listing previous publications of the poems.
• Manuscript must include a table of contents page.
• Please do not include your name anywhere in your manuscript, as it is important to us that these be blind submissions.
• Please clip your manuscripts using a butterfly clip. Do not use folders or any type of binding.
• Include a one-page personal statement about why you want to work in a collective, including special experience or skills you might contribute.
• A title page with your name and address, phone number, and e-mail address should be clipped to the personal statement.
• Manuscripts cannot be returned. If you would like verification of receipt, please clip a stamped, self-addressed postcard to the statement as well.

One to two manuscripts will be chosen by the members of the press through consensus by July 1, 2011. Prospective new member-authors will be notified as soon as possible after that date. We reserve the right to publish no manuscript in any given year. Manuscripts selected will be scheduled for publication in Spring 2013. We appreciate your interest and wish you all the best in your work.

 CONTACT INFORMATION:

Sixteen Rivers Press
P.O. Box 640663
San Francisco, CA 94164-0663

Tel: 415.273.1303 / Fax: 415.221.5116

Email: info@sixteenrivers.org

Judith Kitchen Prize in

Creative Nonfiction

 

CONTEST GUIDELINES

In Conversation: Nadifa Mohamed

posted by Belinda Otas

A powerful and emotionally engaging debut novel, Black Mamba Boy, which was recently longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction, is both a historical document and a work of fiction. Nadifa Mohamed takes us back to Somalia in the 1930s, as she tells the jaw-dropping story of her father’s life and journey. It is the story of young Jama Mohamed and his childhood journey across East Africa after the death of his mother, in search of his father – a man he has only heard of but has never met. It is a journey of self-discovery, survival, exile, dislocation, dispossession and migration that will take him through Somaliland, Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine and, finally, Wales. In her own words, Nadifa Mohamed’s explains the inspiration behind her novel.

Belinda: How long have you been writing and when did you come to that defining moment, when knew this is something you want to do, no matter what?

Nadifa: It was a slow realisation that I was writing something that I wanted to get published, I started writing about five years ago, basically because I wanted to commit my father’s story to paper and from there I discovered how much I, personally, got from writing.

Belinda: Let’s talk about your writing journey a little bit, are you a full time writer and when did you become a full time writer?

Nadifa: I was a full-time writer up until a year and a half ago when I started working again but with writing it’s something that you are always thinking about, working out, whatever you’re doing.

Belinda: How many stories or ideas had you already worked on and didn’t get a good response before you got your breakthrough?

Nadifa: None, ‘Black Mamba Boy’ is the first thing I have written creatively.

Belinda: What inspired Black Mamba Boy?

Nadifa: It was inspired by my father’s unusual life and I wanted to write his story but also about his generation of Somalis.

Belinda: Does the title have any symbolic meaning?

Nadifa: Yes, it is a translation of my father’s nickname. When my father was born he reminded his mother of a black mamba that had crawled over her stomach when she was pregnant.

Belinda: How long did it take to write the novel?

Nadifa: I started the novel in a cottage in Wales in 2005 and I finished editing late   2009.

Belinda: There is the art of writing and the discipline of writing, how do you combine being a writer with other aspects of life without giving one more power over the other and strike a balance?

Nadifa: What I love about writing is that it is actually enriched by the other aspects of my life; the films I see, music I listen to, the experiences I have all help me to write. You need discipline to meet deadlines but the actual creation process for me is fluid and grows organically.

Belinda: Who are your influences when it comes to literature or for their writing style?

Nadifa: I love poetic, gorgeous writing that describes the world. I am influenced probably by everything that I have read, seen and listened to, and it all comes out when you write. In terms of literature, I love lyrical writing: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall, Beloved by Toni Morrison but so many others too. Banjo by Claude Mckay and Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma definitely affected the style of my novel.

Belinda: How would you describe your writing style and voice?

Nadifa: That’s hard! I wanted to celebrate my father’s life and wrote very subjectively because of that. The novel begins when he is a child so I wanted the innocence and adventure of childhood to come through. I also wanted the writing to do justice to the beauty of his life and environment and absorb the poetry of Somali culture.

Belinda: You father’s story serves as a lens for readers to go back in time and experience life in Somalia like we have never heard or seen it. What’s the story about Somalia and East Africa, and your background that were you keen to get across to your reader or anyone who picks up your book?

Nadifa: I was interested in exploring how life in Somalia has changed since my father’s birth and how it has remained the same. I didn’t realise that Somalis generally, and my family particularly, were so mobile. There was a huge community of Somalis in Aden but also in Sudan, Egypt, and South Africa. They grabbed at the opportunities that were presented to them and changed a lifestyle that had lasted centuries overnight, only their nomadism stayed the same.  And that we have an interesting, largely unknown history that spans vast distances and that all of the horrors of the last century are an important part of our story but are not the beginning or end of it.

Belinda: You explore different themes in your book, political disorder, war, violence, dislocation and dispossession, migration among others. But it stands out that this was your father’s journey and one that has migration at its core. Was that a subject you wanted to explore based on your heritage?

Nadifa: Yes. I am an immigrant but I didn’t know that I was a third generation immigrant. My grandparents and father had also settled outside of Somalia, and in similar ways had to acclimatise to different cultures. That knowledge closed the gap between me and them. Migration is still a huge issue for Somalis, we gain and lose through it, and it was incredible to learn that from the mid-eighteenth-century Somalis have been smuggling themselves into countries that they know next to nothing about. However, I also wanted to bring attention to the negative consequences that western colonialism had on the region; the recruitment of child soldiers, dispossession of land, enforced labour, and segregation. People had to flee Somalia not just because of drought and unemployment but also because their country was not under their own control.

Belinda: How far back did you go when researching your story in order to be as accurate as you could be about the historical aspects and details of your book?

Nadifa: I went back to sixteenth-century texts because my father thought that one of his ancestors had fought with Ahmed Gurey and I wanted all of that history and mythology in the novel. Most of the historical sources I used were from 1850-1945 when Europeans began to write about the region and although they described the environment very well, they were pretty useless at describing Somalis as real people. I was ecstatic to find an autobiography by a Somali sailor written in 1929, and it was perfect. He recorded not only his physical journey but his thoughts, feelings, and experiences as well. Somali life has changed so drastically that some details have been lost as generations have disappeared, taking that knowledge with them, hopefully we can record more now.

Belinda: Did you find you were more objective when writing because you did not live in your father’s shoes and so was far removed from the situation?

Nadifa: About some things yes, I could see why my father fought for the Italians to earn a living but I also empathised with the Ethiopians who were fighting to free their country.

Belinda: You write so much about the level of poverty that was endured by many, was this a major concern for you when your father started telling you his story?

Nadifa: Yes and no, it was important for me to emphasise how much people’s poverty formed their lives because my father always impressed on me how much the hustle for survival dictated everything. However, I didn’t want the characters to be obscured by their situations; I wanted them to express their quirks, prejudices, hopes.

Belinda: What topics of discussion did you want to evoke in people with this historical work of fiction?

Nadifa: Many – identity and how it is formed when you are not rooted to a particular place or family unit, the problems that arise when young people are left to look after themselves and how patterns of abuse continue unresolved in communities.

Belinda: Why did you examine the staying power of the characters you created and their ability to endure the rough times and still have hope?

Nadifa: I am interested in how much people can survive, the human spirit is incredibly strong but also fragile. Some people, like my father, can emerge from violent, hopeless situations relatively unscathed while others are broken by much less. When I read about what is going on places like Somalia now I wonder what the actual details of peoples’ lives are, what they think about, what they dream about and hope for, this is what is missing from a lot of the narrative about Africa and other poorer regions.

Belinda: How challenging was the emotional journey as you wrote this book, it is about your father and you must have learnt a lot about him. Was it easy for you to separate yourself from the story and write objectively?

Nadifa: It really varied, sometimes the fact that the boy in the novel was a figment of my own imagination and not really my father was clear and I could separate myself from the story. At other times I was writing about situations my father had really endured and I couldn’t help but feel for him as a daughter rather than just someone who was writing a book based on his life.

Belinda: How important is it for you as a writer to bring the different kinds of emotional facets I could hear while you read at the Southbank into your work?

Nadifa: It’s crucial, to write a novel that people will enjoy and feel they have got something out of you have to access those emotions that people of whatever time or place share. It is one of the reasons that I wanted to write a novel rather than a biography, with novels you breathe life into a character, you make them whole and the reader can sink into their skin. We all feel grief, love, loneliness and every other emotion and we can identify with characters when we see them also struggling with these feelings.

Belinda: And there is the relationship between the powerful and powerless, especially with the relationship that existed in the house Jama’s mother lived in with Jama before she died and also when Jama went back to live with Jinnow and the way he was treated by the other people; was your aim to question that aspect of Somali society and society in general?

Nadifa: Yes, I came to the realisation that however poor or oppressed you are there is someone always worse off than you, and that is true in all societies.

Belinda: I noticed divides along the lines of tribesmen and family lineage, is this another issue that you found challenging to accept during your research?

Nadifa: I had to accept that there was another aspect to the Somali clan-system apart from the really terrible side we saw in the civil war. In my father’s life his clan was like a huge social welfare network that looked after members unquestioningly.

Belinda: What emotions did you want to evoke about that period in people and how they see life today?

Nadifa: Empathy, respect and wonder.

Belinda: What has the response to your book been like since it was released?

Nadifa: Incredible, I have received support and encouragement from all kinds of people.

Belinda: Have you had any negative responses since your book was released?

Nadifa: No! Luckily.

Belinda: What do you want readers to take away from the book after reading Black Mamba Boy?

Nadifa: The books I really enjoy are the ones that immerse me in a different life that let me life somewhere else as someone else for a while, I hope that my novel achieves that and my readers are taken on a journey that will extend their horizons a little.

Belinda: Your book explores relationships and friendships, what did you, as a writer, learn about your father from the friends he had throughout his journey?

Nadifa: That friendship can last a very long time! My father is still in contact with people he met in Eritrea seventy years ago, I hope that my own friendships are so strong.

Belinda: Has this book, in anyway redefined the lens through which you view your own personal history and life?

Nadifa: Yes, I look back on what my father experienced with wonder and pride, and I feel that I must be as generous to people as those who helped my father were.

Images

Image of Nadifa Mohamed: Sabreen Hussain

Black Mamba Boy jacket Cover: Harper Collins

Read my feature on Nadifa Mohamed: Telling Our Stories: Two New East African Writers

Guardian first book award shortlist: Nadifa Mohamed

In the second of a series of Q&As with the shortlisted authors, Nadifa Mohamed discusses her novel Black Mamba Boy

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• Nadifa Mohamed
• The Guardian, Saturday 6 November 2010
• Article history

Photograph by Andy Hall

Why did you decide to write a novel based on your father's story of his journey to the UK from Somalia?

1. Black Mamba Boy
2. by Nadifa Mohamed
3. 
4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

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It was the slow realisation that this story had never been told before: the life of an East African street urchin in the early part of the 20th century in all of its adventure and sorrow. The fact that it was my own father's real journey gave it an incredible power, but I think any life story that included episodes as a streetboy, soldier, farmer, smuggler and sailor would have captured my imagination.

 

In your foreword you mention the griot tradition. Could you explain what that is and how it fits in with the novel?

Griots are wandering praise-singers who are also the historians and storytellers of their societies. Even though it is a West African tradition, I thought it suited perfectly my father's story; I wanted a style that would celebrate his life with great literary flourishes rather than objectively describe it. The griot tradition also shares similarities with Somali poetry in their methods of composition and dissemination, and was a natural fit to the wandering, exploratory life of my father.

 

How biographical is it?

Very. His experiences were so remarkable and far-fetched that there wasn't much need to dramatise. My father experienced colonisation, war and migration from such an interesting and innocent perspective that I had a fantastic story in front of me.

 

Was it your first attempt at writing?

Yes, and it was a huge experiment. I had no background in creative writing, but was a voracious reader. I didn't know why I was writing and had no particular goal when I started, but something about this story just compelled me.

 

What came first?

I began the research before anything else – reading about Aden and colonial Somalia – but found it very hard to put pen to paper. Eventually I went to a cottage in Wales and came home with the first 15 pages.

 

What were the hardest bits?

Those scenes that brought home to me my father's childhood hunger, loneliness and vulnerability. I would skirt around those scenes for weeks, avoiding them because I couldn't bear to recreate the conditions he endured, particularly in fascist-controlled Eritrea.

 

How did you research the novel?

At the beginning I put a huge emphasis on getting the historical details right. I began with the archives of the Imperial War Museum, libraries around London and museums in Wales, and then returned to East Africa for the first time in 20 years. Travelling to Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia gave me a sense of the landscape that I was struggling to recreate in London.

 

How did it come to be published?

I met with an amazing agent, Ben Mason, who agreed to read the first few pages as a favour. I came away from the meeting feeling as if I had a lot of work to do, but we stayed in touch, and after signing with him the book had a publisher within a few weeks.

 

What are you most pleased with?

This novel was a completely impulsive undertaking, and the fact that it has been published and read and well-received is just incredible. I am so pleased that my father's story has been told and that through him we peek at the long history of East Africa.

 

What would you do differently/better next time?

I have learnt so much in the process of writing Black Mamba Boy. The editing was a real education, and I can still hear my editors prodding me to ask questions of myself and my characters. Following an incredibly mobile boy as he travels through 10 countries was so fatiguing that I have subconsciously chosen an elderly, bedridden woman as the protagonist of my second novel.

 

Who were your literary models?

I think that my writing style was influenced by everything I read, as well as the films I watched and the music I listened to, but if I had to chose particular writers, it would be Ahmadou Kourouma for his ability to combine African forms of storytelling with European, but also ToniMorrison, Arundhati Roy, Claude McKay and Dylan Thomas for the beauty and music in their writing.

>via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/06/guardian-first-book-nadifa-mohamed

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We've been talking to the authors shortlisted for the Guardian first book award on the Books podcast. First up was Ned Beauman, who confessed that he began the research for his novel about a Nazi beetle on Wikipedia. This week we talked to Nadifa Mohamed about her griot novel, Black Mamba Boy, and also about the list she gave us of the authors who had shaped her writing. She cited "Ahmadou Kourouma for his ability to combine African forms of storytelling with European, but also Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, Claude McKay and Dylan Thomas for the beauty and music in their writing".

It's a set of writers which helps to explain Black Mamba Boy's unusual structure, steeped in the praise-singing tradition of West Africa, and which also set us all thinking. What riches can we find beyond the long shadow of Shakespeare and Dickens, Bellow and Updike?

So when she came into the studio, we challenged Mohamed, along with the publisher and journalist Margaret Busby and the deputy editor of Granta magazine, Ellah Allfrey, to come up with a literary canon all of their own. They were quick to agree that it should be diverse not only culturally and historically, but generically. Here it is:

1. Banjo, by Claude Mckay (1889-1948)

2. The Black Jacobins, by CLR James (1901-1989)

3. Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

4. The Murderer, by Roy Heath (1926-2008)

5. Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote, by Ahmadou Kourouma (1927-2003)

6. Song of Lawino, by Okot p'Bitek (1931-1982)

7. Salt, by Earl Lovelace (1935- )

8. Kindred, by Octavia Butler (1947-2006)

9. House of Hunger, by Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987)

10. Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977- ) 

You can hear their discussions on this week's podcast, but the furious disputes over the omission of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children show that this is far from a definitive list. Definitive lists be damned – what would you put in your canon for a new century?

>via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/nov/05/canon-nadifa-mohamed-fi...