Latest news with #Achebe
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, dissident Kenyan novelist who drafted a book on prison lavatory paper
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who has died aged 87, was a Kenyan novelist whose work could manage to be both poignant and darkly funny as he challenged authority in many forms – political, economic, cultural and, most significantly, colonial. In 1964, the appearance of Weep Not, Child in the UK made him the first East African writer to have a novel appear in English. This came about with the help of Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author of Things Fall Apart. They had met at the African Writers Conference that took place in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, when Achebe was advisory editor for Heinemann's African Writers series. Although the two novelists could often be muddled by the ignorant, and Ngũgĩ paid generous homage to Achebe when he died, their different approaches to writing would come to represent one of the biggest debates faced by African authors. The question was: which language should a post-colonial writer use? Should it be the language of the former imperial power – an approach one could characterise as 'The Empire Writes Back'? Or should it be the writer's original tongue? At the 1962 conference, Chinua Achebe and his fellow Nigerian, Wole Soyinka, argued for English. However, Ngũgĩ was beginning to think differently, and by 1977, a dramatic sequence of events confirmed his belief. That year he collaborated on a play in his native Kikuyu, whose English title is I Will Marry When I Want, and staged it in Kamiriithu, the community where he had grown up. The play concerned a rich, venal couple called, not too subtly, Ahab and Jezebel, who intimidate a local family, blackmailing them into changing their lifestyles while condemning their daughter for adopting fashionable, westernised dress. It was an immediate hit, and played to full houses for six weeks, before Ngũgĩ was arrested without trial. His house was raided, and his books – some of them Marxist – were confiscated. He was imprisoned for a year, among other political dissidents; they were allowed an hour of sunlight a day. He used government lavatory paper to draft his next novel, The Devil on the Cross, this time in Kikuyu. The response to his play had convinced him that if he wanted to upset the authorities, and to take his audience with him, then his mother tongue was the surest way. He crystallised this thinking in his most significant academic book, Decolonising the Mind (1986), in which he argued that the choice of language is every bit as important as what you say with it. By now, he was more openly critical of Achebe's approach, and relations between the two became less cordial as a result. Even so, Ngũgĩ's own writing went for an ingenious and highly effective compromise: he would write his books first in Kikuyu, and later produce his own English translations. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o was born in Kamiriithu, in the Limuru region, on January 5 1938, and baptised James Ngugi. His father, Thiong'o wa Ndũcũ, had four wives at the time: Ngũgĩ was the fifth child of the third one, Wanjikũ. She left the farm with her children when a livestock disease led Ndũcũ to become increasingly drunken and violent. In 1947, Wanjikũ single-handedly raised enough money to send Ngũgĩ to school. In 1955 he attended Alliance High School, about 12 miles from Limuru. In a memoir, Dreams in a Time of War, he describes how he and his brother would walk to school separately, because he would be in British-style school uniform and his brother in tribal dress; and for the author, two rites of passage – his Christian baptism, with the name of James, and his circumcision by a river – happened around the same time. The struggle for Kenyan independence left a profound mark on Ngũgĩ, and on his work. One half-brother joined the Mau Mau uprising with the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Another, who was deaf and dumb, was shot because he hadn't heard a soldier command him to stop running. By the time Ngũgĩ left school, it was safer for him to continue his studies at Makerere University College, in Kampala. Here he found a more progressive intellectual environment than in Kenya, and a university with more Africans in positions of authority. Ngũgĩ produced his first writing at Makerere. He wrote a short story because he had bragged that he could, and then had to deliver it. He drafted The River Between, which would be his first completed novel (but the second to appear in print) because the East African Literature Bureau was offering a prize of £50. The first published novel, Weep Not, Child, presents the often harrowing events of the 1950s from a young perspective, and is based closely on the author's own experience of family life, with violence both outside and inside the home. In 1964 he left for Leeds University, where he embarked on an MA on Caribbean writing. He never finished it, but he did write A Grain of Wheat, set during the days leading up to Kenyan independence in December 1963. For all the influence of social and political Marxism, the book looks sceptically at the more heroic versions of the struggle that had quickly emerged in Kenya. He returned to Kenya in 1967, and changed his name permanently to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He joined the Department of English Literature, and campaigned successfully for its abolition. An African Literature department appeared in its place, with a curriculum that included oral as well as written literature. Ngũgĩ's arrest in 1977, and his decision to write first in Kikuyu, can be seen as the logical conclusion of this activism. Detention brought Ngũgĩ fame, and Amnesty International urged the Kenyan authorities to release him. President Jomo Kenyatta died on August 22 1978, and his successor, Daniel arap Moi, freed Ngũgĩ in December. But Moi's administration was to become Ngũgĩ's biggest target. Nairobi University did not reinstate the novelist, and he left as an exile, first for London, where he would become writer-in-residence for Islington Borough Council, and later for the United States. There he taught Comparative Literature at Yale, New York University, and later, on the west coast, at Irvine University. Although he visited South Africa during this time, he had to wait until Moi's forced retirement before returning to his homeland, having been warned about the risks to his life from the 1980s onwards. When he did return to Kenya, on August 8 2002, his reception was triumphant, and then horrific. Crowds of admirers welcomed him at Nairobi airport; but three days later, four burglars broke into his apartment. They burned him with cigarettes, and then held him in one room while they raped his wife in another. He felt the attack had to be political, and also that if it had happened under Moi's presidency, they could both have been killed. He returned to his settled life at Irvine, California, where he wrote more memoir than fiction, but won wide acclaim for Wizard of the Crow (2006), an epic in six books in which a tramp takes on magic powers. He uses these to help mock his identifiably Kenyan rulers, before they co-opt him to fulfil their dreams of ultimate power, which prove to be their undoing. Ngũgĩ's plots and characters are rich in Biblical reference: for example, the tyrant who is the butt of the invective in Wizard of the Crow decides to build a Babel-like tower so tall that he can climb it for his conversations with God. Often, though, these vie with traditional Kikuyu stories. His last fiction, a verse novel called The Perfect Nine (Kikuyu 2019; English 2020) celebrates the mythical daughters of his tribe's founders. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is survived by his wife Njeeri, and by nine children from previous relationships. Some of these are novelists who write in English. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, born January 5 1938, died May 28 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
CBC
30-04-2025
- Health
- CBC
Health teams scramble to contain spread of measles in central and southern Alberta
Calling the measles outbreaks "concerning," the medical officer of health for central Alberta says a flurry of work is going on behind the scenes to rein in cases and prevent deaths. As of midday Wednesday, Alberta had reported a total of 170 cases since the outbreaks began in March. The highest concentration of cases are in the central zone, south zone and north zone — parts of the province with the lowest vaccination rates. The central zone now has 65 cases. The south zone has reported 74 cases, and the north zone has 21. Calgary and Edmonton zones have each reported five cases. "The main thing we're trying to prevent is deaths," said Dr. Ifeoma Achebe, the lead medical officer of health with Alberta Health Services in the central zone. As of Monday, two people had been hospitalized, and later released, since the outbreaks in the central zone began, she said. Provincial data, which was last updated April 19, shows a total of nine people hospitalized across Alberta since the cases began in March. There have been no deaths as a result of Alberta's measles outbreaks this year. "I'm quite concerned. That's why we're taking all the measures that we're taking to address the situation," said Achebe. The central zone emergency operations centre is holding regular meetings to discuss the measles outbreak. A key focus for public health teams is contact tracing and ensuring contacts, who are not immunized, isolate to prevent further spread. "I can tell you the volume is quite high," said Achebe, noting people can start spreading the virus before they even develop symptoms. Another complicating factor is that measles is highly contagious. It can hang in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves a location. "Whenever there's a case there's usually a high number of contacts that have been previously exposed before the person even knows he or she was a case. That's a lot of work. Sometimes hundreds of individuals needing to be contacted and isolated." AHS is working to boost vaccination rates in the zone. "We're seeing the outbreak in areas where we have … low immunization rates," said Achebe. Immunization clinics in Two Hills and Vegreville have expanded access, offering appointments on evenings and weekends, she said. Public health teams are also reaching out to schools and communities where the measles cases are centred, she said. "Measles is such an infectious pathogen … that we will see these numbers climb more despite huge efforts by public health to contain this," said Dr. Cora Constantinescu, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Alberta Children's Hospital, speaking on CBC Radio's Alberta at Noon on Wednesday. According to Constantinescu, when an exposure occurs in a region where vaccination rates are low, you can have an explosion of cases. "You see a little bit of that, too, in the way it has spread across our province," she said. "Our south zone and central zone numbers are the highest and when you look, historically, that's where some of the lowest immunization uptake rates are. Whereas in Calgary and Edmonton, we have higher immunization rates and you see the numbers are a bit lower." Provincial data from 2023 shows that 57.7 per cent of two-year-olds in the central zone were up-to-date with two doses of the measles vaccine. Some more local geographical areas were much lower. In Two Hills, for example, it was 24 per cent. In the south zone, 59.6 per cent of two-year-olds were up-to-date that year. The north zone had 57.5 per cent coverage for children in that age cohort. Infectious disease experts say an overall 95 per cent coverage is needed for population-level protection against measles. Constantinescu said a number of factors will impact the size of the outbreak, including the public health efforts, whether people are coming forward when they have symptoms and whether they stay home when asked to isolate. The south zone has confirmed 74 cases so far this year. "When we see these numbers, obviously it does create a bit of alarm," said Shannon Vandenberg, the assistant dean of nursing in the faculty of health sciences at the University of Lethbridge. According to Vandenberg, a nurse educator who has researched vaccine hesitancy, there are a number of reasons people opt not to immunize their children, including unwarranted fear about the ingredients, peer pressure among groups of people and the rise of misinformation. Addressing those concerns on an individual family level takes time, she said. "It's not just a simple conversation with someone to say, 'OK, let's get you to immunize.' It's a lot of conversations over a long period of time," Vandenberg said. "We're not going to magically raise our immunization rates … to 95 per cent in a week, right? We just aren't. So that's the challenge. Can we raise them enough to curb the spread, to slow the spread, to prevent it from spreading into new communities?" Zahra Shajani is urging Albertans to reach out for information from reliable sources such as public health nurses, family doctors and governments. "One of the biggest pieces is understanding and getting the right information from the right sources," said Shajani, an associate dean in the faculty of nursing at the University of Calgary who has worked as a public health nurse. "There's a lot of misinformation, perhaps some myths out there, especially online, related to measles and about vaccine safety." It's important, she said, that parents understand how dangerous measles can be. "This isn't like a flu or cold. It's a virus that's being misunderstood." Measles can lead to serious complications, including pneumonia, brain swelling and even death. According to the provincial government's website, between one and three out of every 1,000 people with measles will die. Earlier immunizations for infants Babies living in central, south and north zones are being offered an early dose of the measles vaccine at six months of age due to the outbreaks. The Alberta government's website says measles is "highly preventable," noting immunization is the most important form of protection. Two doses of the measles vaccine, it states, offers nearly 100 per cent protection. The province recommends people who cannot be immunized — including young babies, pregnant Albertans and those who are immunocompromised — take steps to protect themselves. "You can reduce the risk of acquiring measles by avoiding communities with significant measles spread, only socializing with people who you know are immunized, and avoiding indoor gatherings." AHS said public health teams in the central zone have seen a significant increase in inquiries about measles immunization. Appointments increased 40 per cent during the first three weeks of April compared to March Meanwhile, in an effort to keep potential measles cases out of the hospital and prevent spread to vulnerable Albertans, AHS is also planning stand-alone measles assessment centres in the northeastern part of the zone, where a lot of the cases are located, according to Achebe. Measles symptoms include: High fever. Cough. Runny nose. Red eyes. Blotchy, red rash that appears three to seven days after the fever starts. In darker skin colours, it may appear purple or darker than surrounding skin. Alberta Health provides detailed information on measles case counts, symptoms, free immunizations and possible exposure locations here.
