Kruse's Keys: Read "The Gunny Sack" to Live the Indian Experience in East Africa (Tanzania)

Most of the African fiction that I’ve read has focused on the “native” experience (outside of V.S. Naipaul), so I found the “The Gunny Sack” to be an important novel as it focuses exclusively on the experience of four generations of an Indian family in Tanzania and wider East Africa beginning in the late 1800s.  Vassanji relates this in-depth experience across the span of Tanzania’s colonization and eventual independence through the backward lens of the narrator Kala who parses through the contents of a gunny sack bequeathed to him by his great grandmother Ji Bai.

Through this we see the interaction of native populations, the Germans, and the British as a nation (in the modern sense at least) is birthed.

ENDNOTE: Normally, I take fairly copious notes on this african novels, however, (in this case for fairly boring reasons), it took me some 5 months to read this book (I am typically reading 3 books at a time) and it lost much of its impact on me.  So that's on me. I look forward to rereading this novel again in the future.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.

See our 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Related Posts:
Kruse's Keys: Read "African Kaiser" To Learn an Untold Chapter of WWI History

Africa: Declaration of Delegates from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi from the 2011 East African Workshop on Cyberspace Security

Clientelist State-Society Relations Notes (Barkan, Fatton, Pitcher et al)

Notes on the rural majority in Africa (Hyden, Jayne, MacLean)

'A movie in the making in Comoros' or 'Marooned in Moroni'

I recently watched the depressing and exhilirating "All is Lost" starring Robert Redford.  For those who haven't seen it--it's the fictional story of a man lost at sea whose world progressively deteriorates until...wait for it all is lost (or is it?!).

Well the pics of this poor soul is what that  scenario looks like in real life without the HD cameras
and big hollywood budget.  This unnamed gentlemen is from Poland and he's been stuck in Moroni, Comoros for a few months now.

He bought this boat in Miami (he claimed to have a US green card) and has been sailing around the world since then.  Things started to go downhill when he arrived in Mumbai:

From his profanity-laced tirade (while his english was broken, he nailed the expletives perfectly), I was able to deduce that somehow a corrupt port/customs agent there had swindled him out of nearly all of his money.  At some point he said 'to hell with this' and fled the port.  Somewhere around the Comoran island of Moheli, he found himself shipwrecked.  He claims his ship once had a mast but it looked an awful lot like once of those life boats you see on cruise ships.

Anyway, the Comoran Coast Guard rescued him and towed him to the port of Moroni on Grand
Comores.

With 100 euros to his name, a broken engine, no living relatives or friends and dwindling supply of canned food--his prognosis does not look good.  His own summation of his future prospects were slightly more colorful.

A month and a half after my last visit, though, I recevied an update from a colleague there who said that the Comoran government had given him a little money and that he was slowly getting his engine repaired.

Stay tuned for more updates in 2015!

The sea-faring wayward Polish sailor

I Paid a Bribe and Killing Kony 2012

Updated 1045PM 7 MAR 2012

Two links for you to check out today:

"I Paid a Bribe" is a fascinating idea.  People upload there stories of paying and resisting bribes by government officials in India.  It would be interesting to see sister websites in every country.
http://ipaidabribe.com/

Killing Kony.  Let's face it:  Kony is a despicable murderer.    This film gets the word out and seeks to mobilize.  You can check out one of my past posts that talks a little about Kony:

http://fuuo.blogspot.com/2011/01/zanzibar-chest-chronicles-continue_10.html

Here you can see a rare inverview with him:

http://www.rocketboom.com/rb_06_aug_16/

It's also worth noting that before you donate your money to ANY charity you should examine their financial statements and see what percentage of your donation reaches the intended cause.  I think with Kony 2012 only 31% does which seems paltry.  That said however, if the movie gets the whole world concerned about stamping out Kony, creating a coalition of international pressure/action, it could be worthwhile.  It could also send us down a rabbit hole...

http://pomee.tumblr.com/post/18899601760/kony-2012-causing-more-harm-than-good

http://s3.amazonaws.com/kony2012/kony_all.html