(MENAFN- The Post)
The current migration of young people from Africa to the West for economic reasons has given birth to a rich literary tradition that tries to open up challenges and even opportunities brought in by this mass movement.
I cannot help but see that in Diaspora literature there is an antagonistic relationship between the destination and the home left behind by the one who travels. This is more closely related to the old but constantly resurfacing 'centre-periphery' theory. Generally the western city is the centre and the home of those in the Diaspora is the periphery.
The characters in these works are constantly aware that they are in foreign territory. Their activities show that they are constantly looking back home in the periphery, which in turn is either checkmating them or aiding them down a rebellious path from the culture and norms of home.
Western space causes a lot of havoc on the body and mind of the traveller.
In Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's short story 'Let's Tell This Story Properly,' a Manchester-based Ugandan lawyer, Nnam, gets married to her country man, Khayita without full knowledge of Khayita's background.
Nnam had all along been told that Khayita is divorced with his wife back in Uganda and that there are only two children from that marriage.
Khayita had left the children in Uganda with their mother but his relationship with the mother had ended long before he met Nnam. On several occasions Nnam asks Khayita to bring the children to Britain but he says,“Kdt, you don't know their mother; the children are her cash cow.”
Still Nnam is uneasy about these children being deprived of their father. She insists Khayita rings them every weekend. She even buys him phone cards. Whenever he visits Uganda, she sends them clothes.
On a different note, Nnam had bought a nine-acre tract of land in rural Kalule before she met Khayita. After decades in Manchester, she dreamt of retiring in rural Uganda. But when Khayita came along, he suggested that they buy land in Kampala and build a city house first instead.
“Why build a house we are not going to live in for the next two decades in rural Kalule where no one will rent it?” Khayita reasoned.“The rent from the city house will be saved to build the house in Kalule.' It made sense. They bought a piece of land at Nsangi.
But Nnam's father, who purchased it for them, knew that most of the money came from his daughter. He put the title deed in her name. When Khayita protested that he was being sidelined, Nnam told her father to put everything in Khayita's name.
But all hell breaks loose when Khayita dies in the bathroom in Manchester. The body is sent back to Uganda for burial and when Nnam gets there, she discovers that Khayita has several wives and the eldest actually stays in the house that Nnam bought! They think it is Khayita's house.
Initially Nnam is barred from attending the funeral because Khayita's people do not recognise her as traditionally married. However, some of the few women mourners protest and Nnam and all she had done for the dead man. The women help the community to retell the story properly.
The dead man's family eventually recognises Nnam. This event changes
Nnam a lot and she turns the memory of Khayita upside down. She starts to look for signs of his ingratitude in everything he did or said in the past.
When she gets back in Manchester, Nnam starts to destroy all the household items that remind her of her time with her lying husband.
'
Let's Tell This Story Properly,' is Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's story from her 2019 collection of short stories with the same title. The collection has stories centred on the lives of Ugandans in Britain. Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist and short story writer. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, won the Kwani Manuscript Project in 2013.
The second story from the Diaspora is“Missing out,” a short story by Leila Aboulela of Sudan. It is the story about Majdy, a Sudanese man working on his PhD in London, and his wife Samra, a devout Muslim woman who left her family to join Majdy in London. 'Missing Out' draws comparisons between Khartoum and London through the contrasting perspectives of husband and wife. It also presents themes of religion, political instability, and adapting to a new culture.
The life of Samra in London when she visits Majdy after their marriage, is telling about the reaction of an ordinary outsider to London. As soon as Samra gets into her husband's tiny room in London, she asks, 'Where is your prayer mat?' indicating that she is steadfast about religion and tradition in a space in which these things no longer matter greatly.
In contrast, the learned husband, Majdy, was already lying in bed enjoying his return to that particular quiet of London, which he loved much and he was thankful that it was no Khartoum which“had been grinding around him in a perpetual hum and now that humming sound was pleasantly absent.”
All of a sudden, Samra needs to find the direction of Mecca for her prayers, something that Majdy had not yet worked out after such a long stay in London. Then immediately, Samra snaps at Majdy, 'I can't believe it,' she said. 'You've been here a whole year without praying?'
When the prayer book is finally bought for her, Samra is stunned that due to the European timelines, the frequency of her prayers will be either far apart or too close, depending on seasons. So in winter she would be rushing to pray one prayer after the other and in the summer, there would be hours and hours between afternoon and sunset. Here in London, Majdy argued, praying was a distraction, an interruption and, most of all because of the changing times that followed the movement of the sun rather than the hands of the clock,“praying was inconvenient.”
In their cramped room, Samra's prayer mat took up a large portion of the floor, the old tobe she covered herself with dropped over it in a coiled heap. She felt she was out of place but continued to follow her own course, her own obligations, keen to preserve this practice even though she was away from home.
And yet Majdy wanted her to enjoy lively, civilised London. He wanted her to be grateful to him for“rescuing” her from“the backwardness of Khartoum.” He thought that, like him, she would find London difficult at first and then settle down. But the opposite happened. During the first months, she showed the enthusiastic approval of the tourist. Enjoyed looking at the shops, was thrilled at how easy all the housework was. She could buy meat already cut up for her. There were all these biscuits and sweets to choose from and they were not expensive at all. Even the pharmacies were stocked so full of medicine in so many different colours and flavours that she almost longed to be ill. Every object she touched was perfect, quality radiated from every little thing.
It was the continuity that she found most alien. It rained and people lifted up umbrellas and went their way; the shelves in the supermarket would empty and fill again. The postman delivered the mail every day.
Majdy loudly attacked the lifestyle in Khartoum and indicated why he would not like to work there: 'Number one, I will never, with the salary the university pays its lecturers, be able to afford us a house or a flat of our own. Unless I steal or accept bribes and there is not much opportunity for either in my kind of work. We would probably live with my parents; my mother would get on your nerves sooner or later. You will complain about her day and night and you will be angry with me because you expect me to take your side and I don't. Number two, how will I ever get to the souk of Umdurman with no petrol? And there is unlikely to be any electricity for your fan. The last thing, why do you assume that nothing pleases me better than drinking tea and gossiping with the neighbour? This is exactly the kind of waste of time that I want to get away from. That whole atmosphere where so-called intellectuals spend their time arguing about politics! Every lecturer (in Sudan) defined by his political beliefs, every promotion depending on one's political inclination and not the amount of research he's done or the papers he's published…”
Eventually Samra cannot stand London. She returns home in a huff, leaving Majdy behind!
This story appeared in Granta magazine in July 2010. Leila Aboulela is the author of the story collection Coloured Lights, and of a number of novels, including The Translator, Minaret and The Kindness of Enemies.
The third story from the diaspora is from 2020 from a UK-based Zimbabwean writer, Andrew Chatora. It is his debut novella, Diaspora Dreams.
The main character, Mr Kundai Mafirakureva, is following up on his teacher-wife, Kay in England. Her pregnancy is now very advanced and Kundai has come to be with the beautiful Kay in her time of need, something far away from Chikwava's single minded man in Harare North.
But Kundai walks late. He does not know that he has in fact come to 'school.' He does not know that he is coming to the UK to learn about what women can do, sometimes, to their unsuspecting men when the survival instincts rise above love ties. If you are used to the many novels that dwell on how men typically abuse women, then this book is something else.
From the moment Kundai from N133A Dangamvura, Mutare, manages to secure a visa at Heathrow, a whirlwind takes over. Husband and wife are on new turf. This is the UK. Their constant power struggles over which relatives should receive money from the UK and who should not, begin in earnest. Traditional African filial ties are on trial.
Kay constantly reminds Kundai that he is just a black man, anyway and that black men in the UK have no favorable recourse to the law.
“Kundai, remember, you are just a black man in the UK.”
On several occasions when they have a row, the British police are called to the house and they come with a clear assumption that when a black man is in a quarrel with a woman, it must just be him who is in the wrong. They are ready to assume judge and jury. They often advise Kundai to either come to the station with them or go put up somewhere else for the night. The stereotypes run deep and Kundai is walking down a well laid script.
The climax of their fights with Kay comes when Kundai notices that Kay's mother, vaFugude, has the temerity to use DHL to send love potions or concoctions to Kay from her sangomas, all the way from Zimbabwe! These mixtures are to be used on Kundai so that he becomes a compliant husband. An avid believer in seers, medicine men and dark mystical forces, vaFugude makes it her specialty to consult these darker, underworld forces on behalf of her daughter, Kay.
Everything becomes a power issue with Kay. From sex to normal conversation, she has to have the last word. Their divorce is tumultuous and tends to prove to Kundai that the British legal system is rather impatient with the protestations of men folk in these matters. Kundai has to go to court a record eleven times, to be allowed mere contact with his children. This involves meeting periodically with the children under observation, in a neutral empty hall. The children become tormented and disgusted. They have a distant look in their eyes.
In search of comfort, Kundai goes on to cohabit with a white workmate, Zettie, whom he calls 'a stunning looker.' Zettie is a young liberal-minded white girl from an affluent Buckinghamshire family. She appears to be the answer to Kundai's questing spirit. She quickly learns to cook traditional Zimbabwean dishes and tries to speak Shona. She wants to be the ideal wife to an African man far away from Africa. But on their first visit to Zimbabwe, Zettie falls for and gets impregnated with Kundai's cousin, Kian! They hit it off straightaway with Kian, as they both sit long drawn-out hours on the veranda at the Vumba homestead, downing lagers and continuously chain smoking weed, as if they have known each other for ages. Once more, things fall apart for Kundai.
Kundai quickly moves on. He does not want to be alone. He hooks up with a woman on an online dating website. She is a Zimbabwean called Jacinda. They quickly get married and Jacinda joins Kundai in the UK. In no time, she starts to treat Kundai to the bitterest and scariest lesson of his life. You read on with a numbed face!
Kundai loses it all and his subsequent charmed incantations and chants while in an English madhouse, are the most revealing part of this novel. As a result, Diaspora Dreams could be of interest to those who study the male psyche and manhood. The losing black male is still a dark area, rich with distances to be traveled and depths to be probed.
Andrew Chatora received an MA in Media, Culture and Communication from UCL. When he is not writing, he is working on his PhD thesis on Digital Piracy, with Birmingham City University's School of Media and English. His second novel, Where The Heart Is, was released last month. It is also about life of African couples in the Diaspora.
Memory Chirere
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