The world is full of marred men

But why are they marred? And can literature corrupt?

It can certainly seize and drive. The Gambia is a fluke of geography: a thin sliver of country tracking the Gambia river.  It is engulfed in Senegal which surrounds it on three sides; water is its fourth boundary.  It is a country of dry scrubland and mangrove swamps.  It is desperately poor.  And yet its beautiful people hunger for one thing before many: education, which reduced to essentials means literacy.

Wherever you go, children have one cry: "Any pen."  Schools and families are so poor that few have pens.  It is the same with writing materials.  In the capital Banjul's only bookshop, there is a sad sign announcing that regretfully each person is allowed a maximum of three exercise books.

That shop also has cyclostyled news-sheets.  These are not some quaint local society's publication, but the main source of news.  In March, no newspaper had been published since the middle of January.  At the airport, the first question you are asked as you enter the terminal and the country is: "Any newspapers?" Outside news is seized on eagerly: in The Gambia papers really are black and white and read all over.

How then should you respond to a request for a book?  Everyone has books when travelling; but hardly Shakespeare.  To refuse for this reason seems churlish and even cruel: words have a deep intrinsic value to this people, and to weigh niceties is an insult to their need. But where is the line to be drawn - when must you be cruel to be kind? 

To be specific: does the gift of Jackie Collins' The world is full of married men constitute a boon or a bane?

It could be argued that the ultimately risible salaciousness of her book would spur on the stumbling reader.  Her prose is also, to say the very least, simple.  But the language is worrying.  The tyro may welcome short words and a colourful vocabulary; too many of Ms Collins' short, colourful words have four letters.  It is also misleading: not everyone in the Western world foul-mouths quite so studiedly.  Whether or not they are totally obsessed with empty power and emptier sex is a moot point.  What appals is the fact that the representation takes it for granted that they are.  And it is this which makes Jackie Collins ultimately so damaging, particularly in a country like The Gambia which is predominantly Muslim and conservative, though in a relaxed rather than rampant way. 

Against great odds, its people seem genuinely happy.  This should not be confused with a bovine contentment with their lot: they aspire, and they are happy in their striving.  But this balance is all-too precarious; injudicious and unthinking actions from Westerners could wreak serious damage and upset that equilibrium.  It is as if we were visitors from another planet.  If we are to consider ourselves representatives of a benign civilisation we must never contaminate or corrupt others with our own culture.  Otherwise we will truly be men from the planet Mars.

(14.3.86)

Index

A week in Gourmandy

One of the pleasures of travel is the sampling of local cuisine.  Even the simplest of fare is imbued with subtle local characteristics which raise it far above its nominal station.  So the mind retains forever the salty sensation of fresh oysters in Bayeux, the baked barracuda in the Gambia, the freshly-slaughtered lobster in Loggos, the tuna fish bap in the canteen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  In their savours and smells they become neat parcels of memory: just add water and bring to the boil and your various vacations rise up before you.

But it is by no means necessary to travel to distant climes to sample these culinary delights.  An interesting indication of the level of yuppification of London is the number of restaurants which have sprung up in recent years.  In this, of course, London is merely aping New York, a city where rich hedonistic professionals seem to live to eat rather than eat to live. When I first moved to Abbeville Road, there were two restaurants.  Today there are five, with a sixth opening in two days.

Normally you restrain yourself.  However much eating may degenerate into excess, it is important to ration the experience itself.  In the last week I have broken this cardinal rule, though not always through my own greed.

Take last Monday and Tuesday, for example.  At lunchtime on both days, I had business lunches; in the evening, social engagements.  On Monday I was regaled with stockbroker’s fare.  To be precise, I was entertained by a pair of analysts in their modest but acceptable directors’ dining room.  After aperitifs, we went straight into the Beef Olive, followed simply by cheese and mints.  In contrast, Monday evening was a get-together chez Ahmed’s, with a fine hotchpotch of some ten or twelve dishes, not forgetting nans, raitas, parathas and dals.

Tuesday lunchtime was more directors’ dining rooms, this time on home ground.  We began with smoked salmon, proceeded to chicken in a rich sauce, and finished with lethal profiteroles.  Tuesday evening was American, with a fine clam chowder, then a pork kebab, rounded off with – but already the gourmand’s curse has struck: I cannot for the life of me remember what I did round it off with.

Friday lunchtime is easier to recall, because quite idiosyncratic – The Bombay Brasserie, reputed to be the best Indian in the land.  And the buffet-style food, placed by ourselves on quite the largest plates I have ever eaten off, was equally memorable, if not nameable.

And from there we begin the long haul of the Bank Holiday weekend.  That Friday it was the Metro, the first but not the last of the Clapham wine bars.  Sunday was Just Williams for the evening – just another wine bar.  Monday saw us at the fine new Pizza Express Clapham Junction for lunch, and in an atmospheric hamburger emporium opposite the ABC in Fulham Road in the evening.  But now the gourmand’s curse has done its worst: in the maelstrom of overeating out, not only can I not remember the details of the food, but even the name of the venue has gone.  Voyages in the land of Gourmandy, if too frequent, lead to the River Lethe.

(6.5.86)

Index

Of Africa

It is hard to formulate an adequate response to Africa.  Especially on the basis of a one-week strip to The Gambia.  At first sight this tiny tongue of land in the bulge of western Africa seems negligible.  And yet for various reasons it is probably a remarkably faithful synecdoche for the continent.

First, like Africa itself, The Gambia is not one nation; the concept is not even particularly meaningful.  Its border are arbitrary, roughly defined by the course of the river Gambia.  Mandinka speakers form the largest group in the population, except in the capital where Wolof predominates.  But other languages and associated tribes abound, including the Fula, Jola, Sarahuleys and Aku.  The muslim religion provides another strand – and language.  But Christianity and paganism flourish alongside it, further blurring neat categorisations.  The Gambia’s history as a British colony has added many elements to this heady cultural brew, as has the extensive trade with francophone Senegal, which provides many of the country’s luxury goods and even its television service.

The second reason for The Gambia’s unexpectedly representative position is partly geographical, and partly historical.  Its position on the coast coincides with the start of the main Trade winds across the Atlantic, and the broad navigable river Gambia provided the perfect means of transport and point of embarkation for slaves en route to the American colonies.  As a result, it developed into one of the main slaving stations.  It is not so surprising therefore that Alex Haley in his seminal book Roots should have traced his putative ancestors back to The Gambia.  As a result, the country has assumed a tremendous symbolic importance for America, and hence the modern world: it has enacted the tragedy of Africa.

The Gambia is also an effective introduction because it presents such a telling contrast to anything in the Old or New Worlds, and hence is truly of the Third.  It is desperately poor; its people for the most part eke out a bare subsistence agriculture from the unforgiving land.  There is no local industry, and the nearest thing the country has to exports are a few peanuts and what souvenirs the tourists take home with them.  Disease is a real problem.  Apart from yellow fever, typhoid, cholera and polio, there is malaria, which affects many of the population.  All too often a young and bright Gambian will shiver, sway slightly, and halt in his or her discourse.

And yet for all these outward tokens of the continent, the multiplicity of cultures happily co-existing, for the bright and exotic colours of the dress and the thrilling music and dance, the people remain an enigma.  Their inscrutability in the face of the alien Westerners makes the Chinese look extrovert.  For all that we gain by visiting this rich and generous country, what we take out of Africa is ultimately a sense of how little we know, and also a sense of what we left.  Back home as we travel along dustless made-up roads, past neat suburban houses peeping out from behind prim and proper shrubbery, we can begin to see our world with new eyes.  Perhaps this is the only valid response which we can make to something as huge and unknowable as Africa.

(15.3.86)

Index