Helon Habila's Measuring Time

I just had the great pleasure of reading Helon Habila's Measuring Time.  Set in post-independent Nigeria, the novel traces the life of a sensitive twin brother as he comes of age.

Habila approaches his subject with a realistic yet generous and positive tone.  The protagonist and his friends and family struggle with corruption on many levels.  Political campaigns are shallow personality contests.  Politicians are leeches.  An effective school is shut down to make a political point, and the children have no place else to go.

But Measuring Time features a protagonist who learns from his brother to stand for something, and many other people in the book live that way, too.  This sort of life brings vulnerability, pain, often suffering; but it is the only way to live.  As his uncle, who is in his seventies, puts it to him when he persists in trying to find a way to re-open the school: "This is life.  There's nothing more.  The trick is never to give up."

Measuring Time is a thoroughly African book.  So much of what Americans read or watch about Africa has little to tell us about Africans.  A few white people appear in the book, but they are neither saints nor sinners.  Most important still, they are very much in the background.  For those of us raised on Tarzan and his legion of successors, from Peter Beard's the End of the Game to Meryl Streep's Out of Africa, understanding Nigeria or the rest of the continent requires a healthy dose of books like this one.

The Contradictions of Youth Soccer

A few nights ago we had a little end-of-the-summer party for the soccer team that my son plays on--and that I'm the manager for.

Now that Peter is down to one year to go in high school, the flaws of organized youth soccer seem more and more manifest to me.  Rumor has it that John Calvin arrived at his theology of the utter depravity of humans after observing parents at youth soccer games--though experience with church politics may have sufficed to drive him to such a pessimistic view of human nature.

Yet the great majority of us at the PCU (Portland City United) party were happy.  The  '96 teams are coached by two men of very high character, Tim and Travis, and we have benefited by being overlooked by the more intense parents and players.  We have therefore attracted players who love the game and enjoy each others' company.  There's very little drama among players or parents over playing time or who is on the "A" team or the "B" team. Our players routinely put school before soccer.  They aren't all warming up one hour before the game starts.  The coaches discourage players from playing when they are hurt, even if it's a big game.  They don't yell at each other when things are going poorly.  Those who could play for "elite" clubs stick with us because they enjoy playing with their friends.

Not only do our players seldom burn out, their unselfish, low-pressure, team-oriented approach to the game enables them to often beat or tie the elite, teams full of players--and parents--who are much more ambitious.

Dogs, Blackberries, and Homeless Men

While walking back from taking our dog ,Harley, to his weekly playgroup, I spied a neglected blackberry bush to he side of our local school and found several ripe ones--and was reminded once again of what a bizarre relationship I have with nature, money, and my own history.

We had a succession of dogs and plenty of blackberries when I was growing up in the late 1950s through the mid-1970s in rural Clatsop County.  Most of our dogs wandered off.  One was hit and killed by a logging truck.  They all got plenty of exercise without us sending them to a play group, so their social skills were rough, and their lives weren't exactly sheltered.  (Come to think of it, this description also fits the boys of that time and place, one of whom hanged himself, and two of whom were soon sent to Maclaren's School for Boys.  But most of the rest of us took care of ourselves pretty well.)

As for the blackberries, some of my earliest memories are of spending hours at our extensive blackberry bushes, filling silver buckets and my belly with the dark fruits.  You could sell the berries to a buyer at Miles Crossing for what even then seemed like a small amount of money for all the work it took.  Now, unless I find a neglected bush, I pay what probably amounts to a dime a berry at our hip little local grocery story.

Outside New Seasons Grocers, homeless men sell newspapers for $1.00 each, the price of about 10 frozen blackberries, or the equivalent of about 10 minutes of Harley's play time at his doggy day care.

When I ponder these incongruities, I think there is a very good chance I'll be spending eternity in hell.  And I wonder what the grandmother I never met, who left school in 4th grade and died young, in the 1920s, would make of this life.

Reflections on the World Cup in Ghana and the U.S.

Ghana and the U.S. have very different reactions to how their national teams did in the World Cup.

For Ghana, the "Black Stars" are the source of great pride.  Two years ago a very deferential university student became expansive when our conversation shifted to soccer.  "In that sport, we are the big brother, and you are the little brother," he enthused.  "We always beat you."  In school yards all over Ghana, like the one picture here, boys dream of leading the Black Stars to international glory.

Of course that didn't happen this time around, as the Black Stars compounded poor performances against the U.S. and Portugal with bickering with the coach and reports of corruption off the pitch.  Several opinion makers have identified "indiscipline" as the key problem, which commentators link to the broader failings of youth in general and politicians in particular.  The national team's shortcomings prompt a sort of national soul searching.

The U.S. not only beat Ghana; it advanced out of the group stage and put up a good fight against two teams that were clearly much better--Germany and Belgium.  People who follow the U.S. team closely are generally pleased.  But more casual fans are irritated that the U.S. is still so far behind so many teams.  Why is it, they wonder, that the U.S. can field a military about the size of the rest of the world put together, dominate sports such as basketball and American football, then be such a minor player in the world's most celebrated sports event?

I am sure that this irony is not lost on Latin Americans.  I have been especially intrigued by the American fan who goes to matches in Brazil dressed up like Teddy Roosevelt, the quintessential racist and vulgar American expansionist.  Given the wide gap between the state of soccer in Brazil and the U.S., I suspect that  if the actual TR were somehow pulled out of the grave and restored to life he would stay away from soccer.  As a commentator on a sports radio station put it: soccer can't be that important if we aren't much good at it.  The rest of the world cannot help but smile.

A person is not a palm tree, that s/he should be self-complete

Last night we had our first meeting of  (most of) Yo Ghana's Portland-Area teachers.  Eight local educators and three board members/volunteers got together.  And it dawned on me again--before, during, and after the meeting--that Yo Ghana! is primarily about relationships.

In our living room was Jane, who three years ago decided to take a chance on an organization that was little more than a vague idea.  Now she is offering advice and encouragement to teachers contemplating sharing letters with Ghana classrooms.  And Julia who despite putting in twelve-hour days jumped in with unmatched enthusiasm with her second graders a few months ago.  And Brando who talked with me about education and development in Ghana for two hours straight when we first met a year ago and has been devoting himself to Yo Ghana! ever since.  And Essan who is going to school and working two jobs to support himself and his family back in Ghana but is always there when we need to work out an issue with the Ghana school he was once headmaster of or when a teacher calls on him.

I am accustomed to approaching non-profit work as a series of tedious tasks to be performed so that some greater good will eventually result.  Yo Ghana! is prompting me to re-think that assumption.  Last night one of the teachers asked about the role of development in our work.  Brando replied that if we took care of relationships, of learning about and caring for each other, the development would take care of itself.

"A person is not a palm-tree, that s/he should be self-complete."  Akan maxim.

Teju Cole

Teju Cole's profile rose considerably a couple of years ago when he was one of the main critics of the "Kony 2012" youtube video.  In a series of tweets widely re-published, he criticized the "White Savior Industrial Complex" that the viral video expressed, the widely shared belief that Africa is a blank slate on which western humanitiarians can self-actualize and sentimentalize without much consulting the people they are purporting to help, let alone examining their own motives or privileges.  Cole is part of a growing number of African intellectuals living in the U.S. contesting our stereotypes about the continent.

I'm well into Cole's 2011 novel, Open City, in which an Nigerian-born protagonist records his impressions of New York City.  Part of what makes the novel so intriguing is its relative lack of concern with race and ethnicity.  To be sure, race matters to Cole's protagonist.  But he seems more deeply concerned with birds, music, architecture, and other features of urban life.

Cole's cosmopolitanism is, in and of itself, a critique of the notion that the U.S. and Africa are completely different from each other.

"Captain Phillips" and Crazy Africans with Guns

I watched the film "Captain Phillips" with a certain amount of hope.  The trailer suggested that the film would feature some empathy between the white American (played by Mr. All-American Tom Hanks) and the Somali pirate who took him captive for several days.  Alas, it was not to be.

"Captain Phillips" is merely the latest in a long installment of recent Hollywood Films depicting young African men as unhinged maniacs waving around semi-automatic weapons.  In fact in some respects "Captain Phillips" represents a step back from "Blood Diamond," which featured a noble if crudely rendered black African protagonist among blood-crazed Africans.  Of course the deeper problem with these films is that they aren't about African men at all; the black men are just props for the journeys of white men (Leonardo DiCaprio or Tom Hanks).

Kaiser Matsumunyane is a film maker interested in redressing this imbalance.  He is proposing to do a documentary of the surviving Somali pirate who held Phillips captive: Abduwale Abdukhad Muse.  Matsumunyane's film would explore aspects of the episode and of piracy more generally that western media seldom addresses: that Muse may have only been sixteen when captured; that the pirates were shot and killed while trying to surrender; footage of his mother addressing his determination to help his younger siblings; the role of the West in devastating the Somali fishing industry.

None of this will necessarily exculpate Muse.  But it is essential that white Americans, especially, begin looking at Africa through new lenses, that we learn fuller and more complex stories than those featuring crazy Africans with guns.

But we may wait a long time to see the "Smiling Pirate."  The fund-raising website stalled with the total raised to support the film at $886.

The Smiling Pirate Trailer.