A Cowrie of Hope by Binwell Sinyangwe

Annie Gagiano

A Cowrie of Hope

Published in 2000 when Heinemann was still bringing out new titles in its now discontinued African Writers Series, this brief text is a small gem of a novel. Written by a male author and evoking (in English, occasionally interspersed with words in Mambwe - the local language of a Zambian community in the extreme north of that country) the thoughts, experiences and emotions of a poor rural woman, the writing is wonderfully evocative and the tale grippingly told. The main action of the text takes place in just over a fortnight - a period of great crisis in the life of the protagonist, Belita Bowa, who, according to African practice, is named Nasula after the birth of her only child (a daughter), Sula. Sula is 15 and passed grade 9 at the local school as its most accomplished pupil, winning a place in a good secondary school (for grades 10 to 12), but her mother has not even a coin to contribute to the considerable expenses of the school fees and equipment.

The text opens on the mother's sleepless, anguished vigil as she takes the first of a series of difficult decisions fuelled by her determination to do everything possible to help her daughter obtain the education that she herself (as an illiterate person) never had the opportunity to acquire. The decision is an agonising one, because it involves Nasula's breaking an earlier resolve never to have further dealings with her heartless in-laws - a wealthy, powerful family who, when the death of her husband left Nasula widowed at a young age and with a child to bring up, with brutal greed deprived her of the entirety of the small but vital inheritance which her otherwise ne'er-do-well and none too appreciative husband had expressly left to her. It is this experience, plus the memories of her married life to a loved but arrogantly masculinist spouse and of the years of rural hardship that followed in the village to which she had had to return with her daughter - that settled the woman's determination that her own child should never have to be dependent on a husband (or his family) for her livelihood. In Nasula's life it is her daughter Sula who represents to her the "cowrie of hope" in the midst of her despair.

Sula is a quiet girl, but even though her character is lightly sketched, the author portrays her innate dignity, intelligence and good sense, and above all her empathy with her devoted and feisty mother, with great deftness and delicacy. The cover image very appropriately suggests two women in communion - both figures have the proud yet graceful bearing appropriate to the written evocations of both the mother and her daughter. The small family's financial problem has been brought to a head because it is "the nineties" - the years of more efficient state control in Zambia, but also years of hardship brought on by a devastating drought. It is thus only because no other avenue is open to her to beg, borrow or earn the 100 000 kwacha needed to pay for her daughter's schooling that Nasula decides to brace herself for the humiliation of asking for a loan of this amount from a most unlikely source - her brutal but wealthy brother-in-law, Isaki.

She undertakes the day-long journey alone and on foot, with very little food to sustain her on the way - only to discover that the hoped-for source of funding has ignominiously dried up. The once prosperous village estate is all but deserted of livestock, and poverty (even more acute than her and her daughter's, since here there is nothing to hope for, but only sickness and decay) rules the roost. The promiscuous Isaki, who had tried to force Nasula to marry him according to the custom of the "inherited" widow - but really to get hold of what his deceased brother had left her - lies dying of AIDS; two of his three wives are already dead from the disease, and the surviving one is visibly soon to follow. "It was the new, unmentionable disease of the world that came of the taste of flesh, the one that made you thin before taking you, the disease of today" (27).

The above quotation should give some indication of the sensitivity and vividness with which Sinyangwe renders the rhythms of country speech, and of the Mambwe language, in English. It is convincingly done, without the stilted air of contrivance that is the bane of such transliterations. Getting home, Nasula tells Sula: "My daughter, it was a semblance of a person that we buried. A dry stalk of musanze [=elephant grass], if you ask. He was like this!" (33).

Though she decently mourns the death, Nasula's feelings are a complex of "disappointment, fear and horror", as there is now no further hope of sending Sula to high school.

As they discuss their situation, Sula reveals that an old friend of her mother's (from Nasula's brief spell of married life in the city of Lusaka) has unexpectedly turned up in their local village, and that she will come to visit. Nalukwi, the friend, is somewhat older than Nasula. The mother of a large family living in one of the city slums, she is as poor as Nasula, but known for her warmth of heart and her intrepid spirit - "the woman of a woman" (44), as Nasula calls her.

To Nalukwi, Nasula can tell all her troubles. And true to form, a plan is hatched: Nalukwi knows that the small bean harvest Nasula happens to have stored will sell for a considerable price in the city in this time of drought - enough to cover the schooling costs as well as the expense of the bus journey to and from Lusaka! The beans are gathered and the women travel to the city together - there is still enough time before Sula has to report at the high school.

Yet the middle section of the text is ominously titled "What powers of darkness" - and for all her suspenseful care and utter dedication to the quest for the school fees, Nasula allows herself to be cheated out of the all-important bag of beans without receiving a single coin for it. When she confesses her grief-stricken horror at the crime to her friend, even Nalukwi is unable to contrive another plan beyond the predictably futile attempt to track down the suave city slicker who had conned Nasula out of the produce she had come to sell. All they manage to establish, with the aid of a friendly stranger (a middle-aged countryman), is the name of the perpetrator. Shockingly, to these upright people, the name reveals that the thief is a native of the same region as Nasula. But he is known to be clever enough to cover his tracks or simply to intimidate poor victims, and those seeking to help them, by means of scare tactics. As Nalukwi says: "We are the doormat of the world. We can be stepped on without knowing who is doing the stepping" (92).

Nasula's gloom is slightly lifted by the unexpected kindness of the middle-aged stranger who, knowing that she does not even have the money to pay for her journey home to her daughter, gives her enough for this out of his own meagre profits.

Part Three (which follows), the novel's final section, carries the motto, "I know no other stand than to bury my heart in this heat without fire." It is in this section that Nasula's motherly anguish and despair are described with surreal intensity: "Dangerous thoughts in the caverns of her being beat down upon her parched soul" (97), the narrator writes. She can hardly bear to board the large black bus home which seems both to represent the death of her dearest hope and to spell doom for her daughter's future. So intense are her feelings that "a whirlwind was born inside her, filling her with an unearthly power - a confusion of hate, love and passion" (107).

From within the very dreariness of her despair, a new sense of courage is aroused in her, however, as this poverty-stricken, powerless woman gets off the bus, negotiates the refunding of most of her fare, and returns to the city to find the man who robbed her of the chance of fulfilling her hopes for her daughter.

The first day's search is fruitless and discouraging - beyond her overhearing some of the thief's associates talking about him (but refusing to assist her in her search), Nasula is warned not to tackle so dangerous and ruthless a criminal. Since she is unable to locate Nalukwi's home in the sprawling city, she sleeps in the open at the main bus depot, as she will do day after day, hardly able to afford a bite to eat, and feeling herself to be "a lump of fatigue, sweating and dusty" (119). At times, "the acceptance of defeat beg[ins] to creep over her" - but this "valiant", lion-hearted woman still keeps going.

At last, and by chance, she finds him. [South African readers will be particularly fascinated to hear that the crook has been shopping at Shoprite Checkers, a grand store here in Cairo Road, Lusaka!]

Nasula goes up to the well-dressed thief and directly challenges him. For his part he (predictably) attempts to fob her off, laughing "a small, grotesque laugh which seemed to her crooked, devilish, stupid, repulsive" (125). They come to blows, but of course the frail and emaciated Nasula is bested by the well-fed criminal. Still she does not surrender, and grabs on to his car as he attempts to drive off, recklessly risking her life. Yet by now, the commotion has attracted a (fortunately) dutiful young police officer, who insists that Nasula and the man she is accusing drive with him (in the thief's fancy car) to the Lusaka Central Police Station.

Once they are there, however, an officer senior in rank takes over and lets the criminal (evidently an old crony) go, accepting a bribe in the process.

Yet again all seems lost, but Nasula's love-inspired determination spurs her on to her final, courageous act of risk as she sneaks up the stairs of the police station to find the station commander … "Blood ran to her head and cheeks. Everything lost existence. She heard nothing but the pulsation in her temples and the shrill, unearthly voice in the hollows of her skull. She made up her mind and took the plunge" (132).

And at last, Nasula finds a wellspring of integrity in the corruption-plagued city: someone "with the confidence of a stout-hearted man" (139). The station commander encourages her to tell all in a statement that will help to put behind bars the criminal he has long been pursuing - a statement that also exposes and causes the suspension of the corrupt police officer. And Nasula is paid what she is owed by the (now cowed) criminal, with extra money to compensate for her ordeal in tracking down the thief. Gratefully, "her heart quivering", she takes her leave of the fine commanding officer - "she was astounded by the power and heart of the man, and the world his office had opened up to her" (144), says the narrator. The reader may well feel that this man would have been as much - or more - impressed by Nasula herself.

Buying her daughter's school supplies with the now more than adequate money, Nasula by chance encounters her astonished friend Nalukwi, and can tell her of her quest and its successful outcome before returning home in time to send her daughter to school.

Charming as well as moving, this memorable text is no fairy tale, despite its happy-ever-after type ending. Nasula may have succeeded against the odds of her poverty, gender and illiteracy, and because of her unusual valour, but the writer leaves us in no doubt about the many thousands - or rather millions - who are and remain trapped by those harsh fences throughout our continent and elsewhere. His story of Nasula (and Sula) is captivating and inspiring, and his writing talent unmistakable. He makes it possible to see not so much the political in the personal, as the heroic and epic in the domestic and mundane sphere of a devoted, widowed, poverty-stricken mother, a talented and tenderly loving daughter, and a robust and faithful friend.

If one word were to sum up the quality of this author's vision, it would be purity - but one might add to that description comments on the vivid immediacy and profound empathy of his writing and on his ability to pick on the perfectly appropriate word or image to depict or summarise a state or situation.

One hopes that so humane and talented an author as Binwell Sinyangwe continues to write and to find publishers for his work. He is likely to, if he is as "replete with affection and determination" (5) as Nasula herself, the woman for whom his text conveys such profound respect.



LitNet: 31 August 2005

Have your say! To comment on this review, write to webvoet@litnet.co.za, and become a part of our interactive opinion page.

to the top

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.