Far and Beyon'

Rating:
Summary: A great read about a strong African woman
Review: Mosa is an intelligent girl who grows up in a traditional village community in Botswana. Two of her brother die of AIDS, a disease that is widespread but hardly mentioned. Her mother tries to get her life back on the track with the advice and actions of traditional diviners, her brother Stan is caught between cultures when he has to find a way to mix his African background with the western background of the teacher in whose house he lives. After an abortion Mosa has to fight hard, first to get her place back at school and to get her family back together after years of sorrow, than to fight for her rights in an environment where teachers can do pretty much everything with their female pupils. Using a mix of social skills and cunning ideas she ends up as the glorious winner of the fight.

This book, written by an African woman who is a judge at the high court of Botswana, is a monument for the strength of African woman: the way in which they run society behind the scenes and in which they have to cope with sexism in order to survive. It is also a strong plea for openness about HIV/AIDS. And most important of all: there is an engrossing story to get the message across.

Rating:
Summary: Confronting Understanding
Review: Oh, Stan, I am just tired of feeling like I am being taken over by all kinds of forces: teachers, men, foreigners, other students... I need a way to survive the pettiness around me. (p.115)

Far and Beyon' is, for me, in the first instance an exposition of the plurality and pervasiveness of power. Although domestic violence, corporal punishment and other forms of force feature in the account, Mosa and her family are not merely oppressed by brute force. Mosa's life is, instead, structured by a series of complex, contradictory rules, norms, expectations, and sanctions. Family relations, for instance, are guided by overlapping but mutually incompatible systems: Social norms determine social standing, tasks, responsibilities, acceptable behavior; a closely connected but less pervasively understood body customary practices (which itself has diverse interpretations, see p.151) regulates familial and gender relationships. Somewhere in the distance is the specter of a complex and cumbersome system of formal legal rules based and the Botswana state. Yet, as Mosa's attempt to help Cecilia shows, this recourse is often ineffective, formalistic and impotent (see: pp.172-8).

Contradictions pervade the novel. Botswana, as nation-state, rarely features in the lives of the Selato family save from a devious police officer, a school system, and a formal visit from the education minister to a prize giving ceremony. Neither traditional healing nor modern medicine provide viable solutions to the AIDS crisis, while social norms and customary practices encourage male promiscuity. In her attempt to get an education, Mosa has to contend with an institution operating with Victorian British practices, teachers who seek to forge patron-client relationships with students, and pervasive forms of misogyny. Mara maintains a "female headed household" (p.87) but is confronted with practices, customs, and rules than undermine women's self-sufficiency and access to the most basic rights and resources. Moreover, the contradictions and confusion of modern, post-colonial existence is born out in every aspect of the identity of each character. Mosa initially curses her unglamorous, non-English name which, to boot, means woman (pp. 76-8), while American teachers take it upon themselves to elongate and abbreviate their students' Anglo-Saxon names (p101). Mosa is acutely aware of the disciplining power of language, accent and syntax: "you have to remember to say 'Koki and I' at school and 'Me and Koki' at home" (p.88). The constant clash between competing cultures and values results in a kind of cultural bilingualism. Mosa instinctively knows when her definition of family is incompatible with her English teacher's. Stan patiently avoids his white benefactor's intrusive questions and attempts to hide his ritual-induced scars.

Ask your know-it-all Mr Mitchell how much family counseling costs where he comes from. (p.108-9)

Far and Beyond is a reflection on contemporary Southern African society. It is also a powerful commentary "what makes the world hangs together". For better or worse, ideas, myths, rituals, stories, implicit agreements and strategic silences are the glue of all nations, societies, groups and families. When Stan voices discomfort at a cow slaughtering ceremony, Mosa challenges him by comparing it to western ways of coping with grief. Partly aided by her geographic and cultural distance, Mosa's comparison highlights important parallels between the grieving rituals of western and "traditional" societies by stripping the former of the taken-for-granted esteem and authority that "scientific," institutionalized, and professionalized western practices are often afforded.

Fiction, ultimately, does much more than shed light on what is often left undocumented or underreported. It can also help us understand the urgency and humanity that is at times masked by academic terms and political buzz words like "development," "sustainability" and "equity." Mirroring Mosa's angry confrontation with "reality" which ultimately spurs her agency, novels like Far and Beyon' provide a bridge between education and understanding by drawing parallels between "us" and "them," and by inspiring anger, hope and action.