Gambia’s Dr. Janneh Launches Books in Bristol, UK

Friday, August 08, 2008
The works of an erudite Gambian scholar and academician, Dr. Sabarr S. Janneh, were recently showcased in the Southmead area of Bristol, United Kingdom.Speaking to his audience, the fledgling author recounted his unsuccessful attempts at publishing his books in The Gambia and Senegal. Notwithstanding the financial cost involved, Dr. Janneh has now succeeded in publishing three of his thirteen books 'Learning from the Life of the Prophet Muhammad’, Mansa Tolo’(Coronation) and ’Saa-ba Mini-Yang baa’(Mighty Python) are the titles of the three books launched. The books are priced £14.99, £6.99 and £6.99 respectively on the advice of his publishers.Commenting on the first title, Dr. Janneh said the book expels all expressions that Islam is a religion of violence. ‘Islam has come to civilise human beings, to elevate human beings from the lower stratum of life to the highest position and standard’, pointing out that humans are the viceroys of the Creator of everything - God. He went on to say that the religion of Islam condemns everything negative, destructive, dirty and harmful, noting that this is why the Qur’an, the message of Islam, teaches only peace and proper conduct.Mansa Tolo(Coronation) has as its central theme the institution of democracy, which he said guarantees the right of all people to express their opinion while creating the atmosphere for them to be heard. The book touches on the need for the maintenance of the rule of law and harmonious living.Saa-Ba Mini-Yang Ba(Mighty python) is a quintessential Mandingo folklore which explores the life of a beautiful girl who rejected all suitors in the search for a ‘perfect man’. This brings to life the art of story telling.Dr. Janneh attended informal Islamic/Arabic lessons in his native Gunjur before proceeding to Al-Azhar Institute/University where he graduated with an LLB in Sharia and Law (general system) in 1981.He studied Private and Public International law in the University of Berlin, Germany from 1982 to ‘85. Dr. Janneh’s educational conquest finally took him to the University of Amsterdam (UvA) where he obtained a (Docterandous, Ders) in 1989. The unrelenting Dr. Janneh completed a doctor of philosophy degree (Phd) in the Social Studies Department, University of Leiden, the Netherlands in 1993.He has conducted private teaching in Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands and The Gambia. Dr. Janneh is now engaged in research and writing. His books in the line up for publication include academic, religious and folklore. Being a new comer in the publication business, Dr. Janneh has financial troubles meeting the asking prices of the publishing firms for all his books. He appeals for help. Institutions/persons wishing to help can contact him at \t “_blank” sabarrv@yahoo.co.uk or Abdou Sarr Janneh on telephone (+44)07881983385

Source: http://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/article/2008/8/8/gambias-dr-janneh-launches-books-in-bristol-uk

Creating Our Own Foundations: The History, Present, and Future of Gambian Literature

by Rosamond S. King, Ph.D.

Adapted from a Presentation at a University of The Gambia Seminar Co-Sponsored by The US Embassy in The Gambia, 23 May 2007, Kanifing

Usually when I tell someone I am researching Gambian literature, their response is – is there any? Unfortunately, even other Gambians are not aware of our novels, poems, and plays. There is indeed Gambian literature, and it includes more than 75 texts published over 200 years! This brief essay, adapted from a talk I gave in May at the University of The Gambia, will share with you some of my research – an overview of the literature’s history and its current trends. In the original talk I also showed clips from some of the more than a dozen interviews I conducted, dvd copies of which are now part of the National Library’s Gambiana collection.

The title of this talk is taken from interviews I conducted with Nana Grey-Johnson and Swaebou Conateh. When I asked Grey-Johnson to describe the state of Gambian literature, he said “We are creating our own foundations.” And Conateh compared writing to constructing buildings – putting words together is, he said, like building blocks. I think the phrase “creating our own foundations” also works as a metaphor for our literature – The Gambia is seen as having very little that does not come from abroad or is not overwhelmingly influenced by foreigners. But Gambian literature was and is, by definition, created by Gambians. Gambians themselves have built the foundations for present and future writers. I hope my research in some way also contributes to these foundations.

My research focuses on published Gambian literature written in English for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the majority of written (as opposed to oral) Gambian literature is in English, and English is the country’s chosen official language and medium of educational instruction. I strongly encourage criticism of the small but growing numbers of written texts in other Gambian languages. Gambian orature, the rich oral traditions which include poetry, stories, praisesongs, and riddles, can be linked to literature, but it is a genre unto itself and deserves separate analysis. I also want to say a word about the term literature – Gambians tend to think of literature as any kind of writing published in book form. My work, though, focuses on creative writing, that is poetry, fiction, and plays.

HISTORY

The very first published Gambian author was Phillis Wheatley, a young girl captured in the Senegambian region and taken to what is now the USA as a slave, who later became both educated and a celebrated poet. Scholars have written a lot about her poetry and life, and she is also claimed by Senegalese and African Americans in the USA, but Gambians claim her largely because of her reference to the Gambia River in her poem “Phillis’ Reply to the answer”.

More than 100 years later, and after The Gambia came into existence as an independent nation-state, the first contemporary creative works by Gambians were published. In 1960 the Heinemann African Writers Series (AWS) published William Conton’s The African; in 1965 and 67 the same publisher released Gambian Lenrie Peters’ novel The Second Round and his poetry collection Satellites. Also in 1967 The Philosophical Library published Augusta Mahoney’s play The Rebellion. (A number of people do not count Conton’s books as Gambian because he was born here but raised in Sierra Leone, where the book is set. Some do not consider Peters’ novel The Second Round to be Gambian either because it is also set in Sierra Leone.) These three early Gambian texts share notable similarities. All concern Africans who travel abroad to be educated, and who return home. Also, all were published abroad within a few years of The Gambia’s 1965 independence. As with many Anglophone former colonies, this initial burst of publication (which was also accompanied by an increase in popular theatre) can be linked both to a drive to create a national culture for the “new” nation, and to the creation of the Heinemann AWS. The location of their publishers meant that these writers immediately were exposed to a readership beyond The Gambia. But it also meant that in their native land the books were difficult to obtain and expensive when they were available. Interestingly, although it was not published by the specialist and prestigious AWS, Mahoney’s play had the greatest African and Gambian audience of those early texts – because it was performed within the country and in Senegal at the famous Black Arts conference.

Reflecting their times, all three texts also engage the themes of national and personal independence, as well as how the two are related or conflict. Not surprisingly, Mahoney’s Rebellion also addresses women’s independence. Though only a few books by Gambians were published in the 1960s, those produced provide an important and engaging testament to their time.

Propelled by the excitement and momentum of an independent Gambia and its first contemporary literary works, in the 1970s a group of authors formed the Gambian Writers Club, whose main purpose was to publish Ndaanan. The effort was named after a Wolof word for “accomplished griot.” While only seven issues in five volumes appeared over six years, Ndaanan continues to be very important because it was The Gambia’s only professional literary journal.

The themes addressed were numerous. In the 183 pieces published in Ndaanan, topics ranged from the universal love, moon, and motherhood, to Black nationalism, to more specifically Gambian (or West African) subjects such as jali, Fula traditions, weaver birds, and popular local folktales.

Recent Gambian Writing

You could say that Gambian literature ended the 20^th century with a big bang because of the relatively large number of texts being published, and because of the type of literature being produced. In these twenty years more than a dozen books were released by Gambians, in The Gambia and elsewhere in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the USA.

This generation of writers are more likely to write poetry and plays, more likely to be women, and are almost exclusively self-published. They include Baaba Sillah, Baba Galleh Jallow, Ramatoulie Othman, Ebou Gaye, and Fodeh Baldeh. This most recent generation is also more likely to openly criticize the government than earlier writers and to address controversial political issues (e.g. sex tourism and female circumcision in books such as Costly Prices, The Sun Will Soon Shine, and Dying for My Daughter).

If the first decades of Gambian writing are a source of controversy regarding the “Gambianness” of the content or the writers’ biography, these concerns are no longer relevant. The texts printed or published in the 1980s and 90s were largely by writers born, raised, and living (with the exception of Sillah and Sallah) in The Gambia, and whose works typically include Gambian details in their language, setting, and plot.

This detail is all the more interesting because several recent Gambian books became very popular outside of The Gambia. Mahoney, Peters, and Conton were published in England and the USA in the 1960s, and enjoyed some readership abroad. But in the 80s and 90s, Ebou Dibba, as well as Sheriff Samsideen Sarr and Sally Singateh, were published and widely read in Africa. In particular, Dibba’s Alhaji, Sarr’s Meet Me in Conakry, and Singateh’s Christie’s Crisis all remain in print and sell large numbers of copies in Western and Eastern Africa.

A number of factors account for this shift in readership. Both African and non-African publishers have increasingly recognized the large reading markets of countries such as Nigeria and Kenya (who alone contain millions of literate people). The short, fast-paced young adult novels Alhaji, Meet Me, Christie’s) are perennially popular with teenagers, even though they are not Dibba or Singateh’s best books. (I should note that you can get these books, and most of the others I am mentioning, here at the National Library.)

We are only seven years into the 21^st century, but it seems the trends of the last 20 years are continuing. The majority of Gambian literature is now self-published, including first books by promising authors Mariama Kahn, Baaba Sillah, and Baba Galleh Jallow. There are two major exceptions. The first is the reissuing of Nana Grey-Johnson’s The Magic Calabash by MacMillan Publishers in 2004, which means that his novel will have a new and broader life in African classrooms. The second exception is Reading the Ceiling, Gambian Dayo Forster’s first novel, published in 2007 by Simon and Schuster in London. Over the last 200 years, Gambians have published serious literary poetry and fiction, young adult novels, light or “popular” literature, and a small amount of critical work (mostly by Hassoum Ceesay, Cherno Omar Barry and Pierre Gomez, both professors at UTG). So we cannot deny that by the beginning of the 21^st century, a Gambian literature does exist and is continuing to develop – even if most Gambians and others remain unaware of its existence.

That is a very brief description of the history of Gambian literature. I want to begin discussing some of the important issues relevant to Gambian literature by letting the authors themselves speak via the interviews I conducted.

One issue raised by several authors is that of language – and some of you may know this is an issue many African countries argue about. All of the writers agree that, in general, the English used by Gambians and in Gambian literature could be better. Fodeh Baldeh argues that Gambians should not be expected to write English well because most of us do not live in English, but only use it at school and work. He says that Gambian schools should teach Jola, Mandinka, Wolof, etc., and that these are the languages Gambian literature should be written in. Nana Grey-Johnson agrees that most Gambians do not live in English. But he argues that The Gambia has chosen English as its national language, and that it is a “universal tool” that can help the individual and the nation. He says we need to “fall in love” with English – and his argument implies that English should be taught better in schools, and that Gambians’ general attitude towards the language should be improved. What do you think?

Another major issue raised is the role of the writer and of literature in society. All of the writers I have interviewed believe that the writer has a responsibility to Gambian society to produce literature that is educational and positive. Where they differ is in whether the writer’s responsibility to society is greater or lesser than the responsibility to themselves, to their own vision. Some believe that literature has such a potentially large impact that the greater responsibility is to the society. One author specifically argued against “first amendment” writers who would put freedom of individual speech ahead of responsibility to community. But another argued that if the writer’s first responsibility is not to her or himself, then what is produced is not really literature from the author’s mind, but is instead the copying of other people’s beliefs. Again, I am interested in what you think.

Those are a few of the issues being discussed in terms of Gambian literature’s “present,” or Gambian literature now. But what about the literature’s future?

When I asked Gambian writers what Gambian literature needs, several ideas were repeated. A publishing house or cooperative to get manuscripts into book form, and to edit and proofread the writing. More Gambian literature in the schools. A national theatre to produce Gambian plays – and more Gambian content on local radio and television, including GRTS. More contests and prizes to encourage young Gambian writers – and perhaps another journal.

And I am going to add to this list more criticism of Gambian literature – to which I hope more Gambians will contribute. Criticism is important because it provides context for literature – in relationship to history, society, and politics, and in relationship to other literatures in Africa or around the world, Criticism can also help build the readership of Gambian literature at home (through reviews in newspapers, for instance) and abroad (through conferences and articles).

But what Gambian literature needs most to continue growing is for more Gambians to write! I want to end with some of our esteemed writers offering advice for people who want to write, or are secretly writing. Several writers eloquently discussed the importance of Gambians telling our own stories. o I end with that encouragement from the present generation of Gambian writers and critics to the next generation. For us to together continue building on the foundations of Gambian literature.

Friday, July 13, 2007 (source: http://www.wow.gm/africa/gambia/article/2007/7/13/lets-talk-literature)

Rosamond S.King, Ph.D., a Gambian, is a scholar of international arts and culture, as well as a writer and performer. Her essays and articles on visual art, dance, and literature have appeared in numerous magazines and journals.

In this interview, she speaks with the authority and self-assurance of somebody who knows Gambian literature inside out. This is hardly surprising because she is a Fulbright scholar who has done extensive research on Gambian literature. She stands out as one of the leading voices on Gambian literary criticism and is one of the forces behind the SABLE LitFest that will start on Friday, 13 July 2007.
Excerpts.

What’s Gambian literature?

Gambian literature is the literature that’s produced by Gambians and some of it could also be literature that’s produced by people who live in the Gambia but may not be from here. What most people don’t know is that Gambian literature is actually hundreds of years old. It began with Philis Wheatley who was a woman born in the Senegambian region, taken to the United States as a slave and became the first African-American published poet in the US. A lot of people in the US know her history but a lot of people in the Gambia don’t know her history. She’s one of the first Gambian writers. And then of course we have the contemporary writers: Lenrie Peters, Nana Grey-Johnson, Sally Singhateh, etc. We have a number of living authors who are part of our cultural heritage now.

Can we say then that Alex Haley’s Roots is Gambian literature?

I’ll say that Roots is a book that people who are interested in the Gambia should read but I won’t include it as Gambian literature because its focus is not Gambian – that’s, it’s not written by a Gambian, and its focus is not Gambian. Part of it, in the beginning, talks about the Gambia but its focus was really to write an epic novel that focuses more on the African-American experience in the US. I think for people who are interested in that time period, it would be very useful to read Nana Grey-Johnson’s novel I of Ebony, which tells some of the same story but tells the story of people who actually didn’t leave the continent.

Why haven’t Gambians made their mark in the literary world yet? In Kenya, there is Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, there are Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, and there are Sembene Ousmane and Mariama Ba from Senegal. What do you think is responsible for this?

I think there are a few reasons. One, we don’t have the arts integrated into the school system in the way, for instance, Senegal has. Senegal has a school for the arts. Unfortunately, we don’t have that here. I think if we have more teaching of the arts in the schools, more encouraging of writing in the schools as well as places where people can go to focus on developing their own craft that will help. The other thing, of course, that’s a problem for us is that we don’t have a publisher here in the Gambia. Macmillan focuses on educational literature, children’s literature. But in terms of literature for adults – novels, poetry – we don’t have any publisher. As a result, people often have to pay for their own publishing. And then of course that makes it very difficult if people have to pay to get published. One of the things that the SABLE Literary Festival coming here will help do is that people will be able to have contact with other writers from other countries. And there’s actually a session where people can discuss with them the logistics of being a writer – how do you become published? How do you approach a publisher? Because we may not get a literary publisher here in the Gambia but that doesn’t mean that we can’t send our manuscripts to publishers outside.

What do think should be done to encourage Gambian publishers like Fodeh Baldeh of Fulladu Publishing to put Gambian literature in the limelight?

Fodeh Baldeh is publishing Gambian writers. I believe he has come out with two books since he’s been back in the country. His publishing house is still subsidised by the writer. So, the writer funds the publisher. It’s still similar to self-publishing; it still requires some income from the part of the author. But I think the encouragement comes from a number of different levels. We need people who want to read literature, so we need to encourage more young people to read literature; we need to have more Gambian literature in the schools; we need to have literary events, festivals, contacts. And we need to have the support of all of the different sectors of society to promote not just literature but reading, because reading is really the root of writing. Every writer that I have spoken to and asked, “Why do you write?” They say, “Oh I was inspired when I was young: I read this, I read that. I was very encouraged by Achebe. I wanted to tell the Gambian story. We want to encourage those people to get their works out as much as they can.

Who’s the greatest Gambian writer?

You’re asking me a difficult question. I won’t single out one person and I’ll tell you why. All of these writers are telling different stories. And we need all of these stories. There is no one person who can tell the one Gambian story. The Gambia is a small country, but we have many, many stories. We have different kinds of people who live here; people have different kinds of experiences. Even individual artists tell different stories. Nana Grey-Johnson’s I Of Ebony tells a story from the 19th century Gambia, but the Magic Calabash is telling a story of contemporary Gambia. Sally Singhateh’s The Sun Will Soon Shine tells a story of contemporary Gambia. All of these voices are important because they are all telling different stories. What I would love is that more than one person can represent Gambian literature and the Gambia. The African Writers Series was a wonderful idea but unfortunately it’s now out of print. What happened was that you had one person from each country who got published and who was put forward. But now we can say, ‘You know what, we have more than more.’ We have Lenrie Peters and we love Lenrie Peters, but we have these other ones as well.

What should be the focus of Gambian literature at this point in time?

I think Gambian writers must look inside themselves as well as around themselves to write the stories they feel need to be told. I think many stories need to be told. And the fact is that we cannot mandate a story to be told. If anyone says that we must write about F,W,Z, yeah, a writer can do that but if they are not attached to the story, the story won’t be interesting, the story won’t be told well. And we won’t want to read the story. The stories that are best told are the ones really close to the heart of the writer. I interviewed over a dozen of the Gambian writers, and they all told me that they were writing for their community. But it also has to be a story they want to tell. So it’s a combination of the desire to tell your story and to tell the story that reflects your community. And then you have the issue of gender that comes up. You have Sally Singhateh and Ramatoulie Othman who writes about the issue of bumsters, a very contemporary issue. Something that people talk about all the time; and this is the first time we are seeing it in the literature. I think there are a number of issues that are both reflected in society and in the literature, because the Gambian writers belong to the society and they are responding to what is going on around them.

Dr Rosamond S. King

The Point

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BIBLIOGRAPHY click on Long Island University

DREAM KINGDOM

New and Selected Poems

Published March 2007

by Tijan M. Sallah

Dream Kingdom is a fascinating selection of the Gambian poet Tijan M. Sallah’s poetry, which in his own words reflects “the mystical and mythical basis for all poetry.” This book includes selections from most of the poet’s four collections of poetry: When Africa Was a Young Woman (1980), Kora Land (1989), Dreams of Dusty Roads (1993), and Harrow (unpublished). It also includes some unpublished new poems. The poet notes, “the volume is a backward gaze at midlife, a selective stocking…” “Midlife” the poet reflects, “is the peak of the mountain of life. I look down and fear the fall. Dreams descend from their unrealism to the ground.” The poems in this selection reflect a rich and generous imagination, spanning over twenty five years of poetic artistry, ranging from personal experiences of coping with adversity; ordinary experiences of family, love and friendship relationships; to struggles with African politics; to journeys to Persia and ethical musings on America and global injustices in Bosnia and elsewhere; to intellectual flirtations with the mythic and the mystical. These poems are deceptively simple as they are amazingly rich, and they paint the imaginative world of one of Africa’s most talented poets of the post-Achebe and Soyinka generation.

“[These] poems have the immediacy of folklore, and reverberate with the power of an imagination large and generous enough to encompass not only the “old” civilization of the poet’s homeland, Africa, but also the relatively new one of America. It is the images and perceptions they quicken, however, that hold my interest in poem after poem…. A fine [selection]!”

—H. Lloyd Van Brunt
American poet

“[This] work seems produced by a sure hand! …enjoy it!”

—Gwendolyn Brooks
late Pulitzer Prize winning poet

“…a poet of fine talent. When he touches the subject of his homeland, Africa, there is aliveness, a depth, a sense of time and culture, and an accuracy of portrayal we seldom [experience]…”

—Lee Pennington
Appalachian writer

“….there is little question about [his] talent.”

—Charles Larson
Professor and Literary Critic, World Literature Today

"[This selection] offers us the [the poet's] new work and work selected from previous collections. His touch is still sure; the images sharp; and the phrasing precise. And he has a continuous awareness of contemporary events —particularly shown in references to Mandela and the women of Soweto. ... a welcome new collection."

—Prof. Dennis Brutus
distinguished South African poet

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIJAN M. SALLAH is one of the leading African poets of the post-Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka generation. Born in Sere Kunda, Gambia, in 1958, he was educated in the US at Berea College and Virginia Polytechnic Institute where he received a Ph.D. in economics. A former professor of economics at several American universities, he now works for the World Bank. Author of several books of poetry, short stories, ethnography, literary criticism, scholarly articles, whose works have been featured over the National Public Radio and the BBC, Dr. Sallah most recent book is a biography of Africa’s foremost novelist, Chinua Achebe. He is currently completing his first novel on the Abrahamic religions in Africa.

Source: Africa World Press

Order from Half.com, Bookfinder.com, AllBookstores.com

On My Knees Before These Mighty Heavens

Walsworth Pub Co (June 29, 2007)
ISBN-13: 978-1578640669

By Momodou Ceesay

In this book, the protagonist Issa Kujabi seeks an audience with God, in order to lament on the condition of African people today. The book speaks of social injustice; the cold-heartedness of the ruling elite in Africa; and the phenomena of Africa s demise, but done with poetry and art. Two distinct expressions of creativity are combined to put forth a powerful and moving story; a story of an African man s spiritual journey. The work uses excerpts from Hebrew Scripture and the Koran to describe the searching for a better life for African and African American people. Momodou Ceesay adds to the virtual reality of the story line by delineating the poem with 36 of his original paintings. Through a dialogue , the poem begins with the particular destruction, genocide and suffering of African people and of their descendants in the Diaspora. The scope is then widened to include the negative forces that seem to grip the planet as a whole. It moves from despair to vision as the dialogue progresses, ending with a revelation giving reasons for suffering and what the future holds for Africa and the world as a whole.

About the Author

Momodou Ceesay was born in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia, in West Africa, in 1945. His early education was received in Banjul, but in his teens he was granted a number of scholarships to study abroad, at Suffield Academy and Wesleyan University in Connecticut. In 1970, he received a Bachelor's Degree from that University, having majored in languages and literature. He has also received diplomas from the University de Poitiers in Tours, and La Sorbonne in Paris, both in France, for studies of the French language. After these academic pursuits, Ceesay decided to pursue a career in art. Essentially self-taught, the artist was able to, from the beginning, bring forth a highly individualist vision, as seen in the uniqueness of his style and use of colors. This trend is seen in his numerous acrylics, watercolors, and serigraphs. Ceesay has exhibited extensively, and is in major public and private collections around the world. In the United States, his works are well known through the Heritage Collection card series.

Source: Amazon.com

Reading the Ceiling

By
Dayo Forster
www.dayoforster.com
www.africanloft.com/reading-the-ceiling-with-dayo-forster

Synopsis

Ayodele’s life will tread a different path depending on a decision she makes on her eighteenth birthday, on the cusp of womanhood; but how will she choose?

One path will send Ayodele to Europe, to university – and to the pain of first love. Another will have her travel the globe after suffering immeasurable loss. Still another will keep her in Africa, a mother and wife in a polygamous marriage. And in each of Ayodele’s possible lives we see how the interplay of choice and fate determines the shape of our lives. What part of us would be different if we had made different decisions? And what part of us would stay the same?

An Excerpt from Reading The Ceiling

In the slit between my bedroom curtains, I see a long triangle of sky more grey than blue. The light changes with each sweep of my eyelids. At this time of year, when the harmattan blows straight off the Sahara, not even the wide expanse of the River Gambia can add enough wet to stop it in its tracks. It has coated the mosquito netting on my window with dust. Today is my birthday. It is also the day I have decided to do The Deed.

“Remember, they are only after one thing,” my mother says. She advises me to stay aware of what men want; that I need to practice light prancing, à la Mohammed Ali, keeping my butterfly just out of their reach. Keep myself. For what? At eighteen, why do I need to keep to the butterfly dance? Why exactly?

“Otherwise everyone will think you are loose, cheap.” That’s the answer my mother would give.

Osman’s radio starts a low volumed griot wailing, a sound that always seems to be around, melding with the air. The plucking of the kora strings weaves around a mellow baritone voice. I find it strangely comforting as the sound soaks into my skin. Today the singer is telling of Sunjata Keita, a warrior king whose exploits in the savannah have been erased by tropical sand and hot winds. But whose deeds are played on, retold over the years in the memories passed through mouth and ear of the people who hold our histories in their heads. The griot sings,

The Sunjata story / Is very strange and wonderful.

You see one griot, / And he gives you an account of it one way,

You see another griot, / And he gives you an account of it in another way.

The radio moves and a clanking joins it as Osman picks up his kettle. The griot continues,

Cats on the shoulder / The hunter and the lion are at Naarena.

A minute later, I hear Osman at the tap. The water gushes into the kettle, sounding hollow against the metal, then drowns itself by the weight of more water.

Osman is our family’s night protector. He is paid to watch while we sleep. Now he has to greet the day with sleep soaked eyes before getting ready for his real job, shifting sacks of rice, flour, or sugar at the Port. A few ships dock this week, conjuring jobs for men with muscles who don’t mind the work being irregular.

Both sides of this watchman deal are grateful. Osman gets extra cash for his family in Mansakonko, with additional sprinkles of tightlipped help from my mother when his unexpected emergencies arise. Such as:

#1. The new baby has malaria.

#2. The middle boy was sent home because he didn’t have his school uniform.

#3. The mama’s leg isn’t getting better from that dog bite.

In exchange, my mother gets the security of a man about the compound. Someone who can run to our rescue if a gang of toughs ever smashes its way into the house. In case any of her emergencies arise, unexpectedly or otherwise, our muscular, manly, hired Osman is around.

So, here I am awake, one in a household of four females protected in the night by a wiry thin-faced man from Mansakonko. The drumbeats of other kinds of dangers are in my ears, while the other women in the house sleep, dreaming like butterfly dancers.

The flame coloured cockerel at the Salani’s is shrieking hoarsely. Its loud nasty echoes fade into still air. My mother is soon awake. I hear her shuffle past, her bedroom slippers muffled against the tiles in the corridor. A yell out of the window,

“Ozz-maaaan. Demal jainda mburu.” Go and buy some bread.

“How many?”

“Nyeta.”

Number of hot, stub-ended stretched loaves needed for breakfast: three. Number of unloose women left in the house: ditto.

Who should I choose from the four on my list? It’s scary to think through the options knowing I have to decide on one. My possibilities begin with Reuben. Why is he on the list at all? If the idea comes creeping that I need him as a fallback, my failsafe option in case it turns out that the others don’t want to be chosen, I will swat it away. He’s there because, well I guess, because he fancies me. I’m not exactly breathless with desire, but a list is a list and it therefore needs entries. So he stays. With one of his front teeth showing bigger than the rest, jutting halfway up his gum. With his thick framed glasses that darken whenever the sun casts shadows over his even toned, blunted oval of a face. Reuben has a plank-flat bottom and wears brown crimplene trousers. An ex-Boy Scout, not ugly, but not what you could call a catch. Reuben does not seem to know how to angle his body properly as he lounges on the short school wall. He’s not yet safe in his own body. I wonder how he’ll be about touching someone else’s. But how can I ever know that kind of thing about someone, without trying him out?

Another option is Yuan Chen. Last term, everyone at school kept saying he was my boyfriend because we were always together during break, but he’s not really. He can seem sexy if I try. His Chinese father came over to teach our farmers how to grow paddy rice. Then he stayed and his wife eventually came over and they stayed some more. When our government got tired of Mao style paddy farms, his parents started a restaurant called Green Bamboo where they cook a lot of white rice.

Last year, he asked my friend Remi and me over to his parents’ restaurant as my birthday treat and he made sure we got a platterful of freshly fried springrolls which are my favourite. I watched his lips form the words: “Good springrolls need the pastry rolled so thin you can see through it. The filling has to be cold so it doesn’t stretch the pastry and make it tear.”

Maybe it was then that he started to creep into my consciousness as a Possible. Remi protested that those instructions were not clear enough: “They never turn out right, even if I leave the stuff in the fridge overnight.”

He laughed, eyes bending up at the corners, his floppy black hair brushing his eyebrows,

“To cook, the oil has to be really, really hot so it singes brown almost as soon as it reaches the pan.”

I think he’d be gentle. When we were at the beach after Tunji’s party, Yuan and I were leaning against his car as we waited for the others. It was quite dark as the moon was not yet up and the stars pinpricked the sky’s velvet. There was a bit of a breeze off the sea and when I said I was cold he took his sweat top off and put it around me in my strappy dress. He tucked me in under his shoulder and it felt kind of cozy.

I don’t want to wait for this falling in love business, or aim for passion, even though it sounds attractive enough in Mills and Boons romances. I want to get this sex thing over and done with so my life can move on. Among the girls I know, some already have done it. Amina and Mahmoud did it behind the school kitchens when we were still in the third form. She needed to go to the nurse for a spare uniform as stuff had leaked onto her skirt. I remember that after school, she walked funny all the way to the bus stop. Now, when Amina talks about boys and men, she seems to be having a great time. She says sex can be mysterious or straightforward, either a fantastic experience or as simple as what dogs do. Her cheeks climb up her face, her deep dimples show as she talks. It seems as if she’s defying life itself, as if the choice has been hers all along. She’s able to brush off what my mother, and probably hers, might think. She’s started to claim life in her own way.

Moira, on the other hand, says she’s going to wait for the right one, she won’t do it until she’s sure. She has a crush on Idris, who bounces on and off my list. When we’ve talked about him, she does that “oooh, he’s so cute” thing. I can see that Idris obviously has the experience. And everyone seems to like him. Girls like Moira giggle and the Amina types look him up and down. The shape of his back, his shoulders in his white school shirt as he walks away down a corridor catches my eye. I tend to keep very still inside, not wanting to let any smoochy type of longing jump free. Sometimes I ache to be noticed by him, wanted and pursued. Yet at other times, I feel like I’d just be another pair of knickers in his drawer, taken simply because I was there.

And the largest mango in my pile? The biggest bonga on my stall? My best friend’s father, Frederick Adams, forty two years old with a pot-bellied future, a short full beard, hair closely trimmed to his head and fingers which can make the skin sing. Nothing much’s happened yet, of course. Just one leaning-over-to-open-the car-door touch. Just one let-me-introduce-this-youngster-to-Motown dance.

“I bet you youngsters don’t know about this kind of music. Want to dance?” he’d said. But he hadn’t stuck to the usual avuncular version – at arms length. He’s on the list because I think he might teach me quickly. This is so obviously one of the things that will have to remain secret, be doubly hidden and buried from my mother (and Remi), with me having to pinch my words. But just the once with him might be enough.

It’s almost as if I can see a list of names in my head, with mini head shots alongside, each taken in a studio with a full glare of lights, so that as I peer into each photo, I can see the pimple above Reuben’s eyebrow, notice that Yuan’s eyes are set slightly too close together, linger over the pout in Idris’ lips, observe the sheen on Frederick Adams’ face. I can choose whether to put a tick, a question mark or an x against each name on my list. It’s in my power, it’s up to me.

The story behind the book

“How do you think your life would have been different if you had stayed in The Gambia?” This chance remark made by a friend and my interest in mathematics led me to thinking about how to conceive a novel around alternative lives.

I drew up a tree, which I vaguely based on Boolean logic, of a choice that could only have two outcomes. Then I devised a series of choices and picked out episodes in a life of a created character, Ayodele, which would meander to each choice and, sometimes be linked to another chapter further on. I also used an all-knowing voice, representing some higher-order intelligence, that would be able to see through the entire tree of her life, and intoned about the vagaries of fate at various points.

In a rush of energy I wrote the first draft in four months, each chapter being a day in the life of Ayodele, at the end of which she had to make a choice which would lead to one or the other branch of the Boolean tree. However, the structure only worked to a point. It was unwieldly and rather difficult to understand. A year later, I had abandoned it, not knowing how to improve it. I reworked the first chapter into a short story, which was accepted for publication.

Armed with new ideas and strongly supported by new found literary friends, I completely reworked the novel, and made the structure subject to the story. I simplified it to having a single choice at the beginning of the novel, and restricted myself to working with three lives, which had to tell individual yet complementary stories of the protagonist. I strung together various existing chapters into coherent lives but found huge gaps in each. As I shifted the focus to story telling, only a third of the original draft stayed … and the elaborate mathematical structure receded in the background.

Hopefully, some of the mathematical ambition is still retained in the final story, for readers to stumble into.

I started the novel in 2001 and finished it in 2005.

About the Author

I was born in The Gambia, a tiny strip of a country in West Africa’s coast. We lived in a house that overlooked a medical research centre which contained huge cashew trees. A taste for tree climbing and adventure developed in order to go cashew hunting on the other side of the fence. As a much younger sibling among five, I was known to spend hours in the bathroom – the only secure place to escape household chores – either reading, or staring at the floor, which had speckled grey grains embedded in white tiles. I used to daydream patterns and pictures in my head, as one does looking at clouds – or the ceiling, as my protagonist in Reading the Ceiling does. Our house was close to the ocean, and I could always hear the sea at night as a child, crashing away against the rock cliffs jutting out into the Atlantic.

My family is one of a group of Krio speakers who emigrated from Sierra Leone into the Gambia during colonial times. As a child, our extended family was large, and also included a host of friends of our parents who we called ‘aunt this’ or ‘uncle that’.

When I was eighteen, I left home for university. As there were no universities in The Gambia at the time, everyone who aspired to one had to leave to study overseas. I studied statistics and computing at the London School of Economics.

Although I have always been a keen reader, my interest in writing was mostly restricted to a series of teenage diaries, chronicling life, friends and daily intrigue. During a brief flare of interest in the student college magazine, I published a single article in the Beaver, a review of some sort.

I took up writing aged 35, while living in America, essentially to figure out a way of expressing opinions and publishing essays on various topics. I stumbled into fiction while attending a writing workshop. The optional assignment was to extend a character in a story someone else had written. I tried it – and was bowled over by the power of virtual reality – the ability to create someone else’s world and be able to view everything through that person’s eyes. And to feel God-like, able to make things happen, yet be sensitive enough to continue to inhabit a character’s skin.

I attempted various kinds of pieces, essays, biographical pieces, the occasional short story, a couple of abandoned novel ideas. It was at this time that I started working on Reading the Ceiling.

I have since published a short story in Kwani?, a Kenyan literary magazine, and have participated in the 2006 Caine Prize Writer’s Workshop, during which I produced a new story, which was published in an anthology, The Obituary Tango.

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BOOK REVIEWS :

The Shock (1999) by Michael H. Secka,
The Sun Will Soon Shine (2004) by Sally Singhateh, and
Costly Prices (2005) by Ramatoulie Othman

Books reviewed by:
Dr Pierre Gomez
Senior Lecturer
University of The Gambia

In The Shock (1999) written by Michael Hamadi Secka, the central theme focuses on religious hypocrisy, where people use religion as a tool and a cover to embark upon deleterious or unfathomable social injustices like sex discrimination and child molestation. The text describes the story of a young girl Madina who travels from her village to the city to live with her uncle, whom she never saw before coming to live with him. She is later seduced by her uncle’s friend and gets pregnant. Her uncle forces her to commit abortion and in the process she dies. The uncle not able to bear the shame commits suicide.

In The Sun Will Soon Shine (2004) written by Sally Sadie Singhateh, a female author, portrays an intelligent, ambitious girl growing up in a Gambian village, where marriage and motherhood and Female Genital Mutilation are often issues that women have to endure. The female character, the heroine of the novel is full of immense courage, able to see beyond her situation, despite the bleakness of life. She is overtaken by circumstances beyond her own control and is forced into paths which she has desperately fought against. She is however able to see beyond her situation, despite the bleakness of life. She makes it through her darkest hours and emerges stronger. At the end of the novel, only determination could have changed her situation.

In Costly Prices (2005) by Ramatoulie Othman, the theme centres on tourism which has both economic and cultural gains as well as disadvantages. The story is about three Gambian friends, Musa, Kadri and Lamin who through connections with European friends are able to travel to Europe hoping for a better future. The story however focuses also on the plight of the women left behind by these men and expected to wait for them while they are married to other European women. It also portrays the differences between European and Gambian women on issues relating to decision making, economic independence and culture.