gods bits of wood.

reading africa, book six. senegal.

there have been no audio posts lately cuz my voice sounds ASS i have a blocked nose and the longer i speak the more blocked it gets grrrr. once its unblocked n i sound sexy again i will upload those voice recordings for ya. also i mention religion and do not capitalise anything. as usual please just disengage if thats going to offend you thank yewwww. also this is my first full length book review in months its a bit all of over the place. hoping to keep up and post more of these.

twenty sixth newsletter, delivered from spring (ACTUALLY BECAUSE THERES SUN OUTSIDE AS WE SPEAK AND FLOWERS AS WE SPEAAAAAKKKK) with love! pic credit lilliandaisyjournals.

when i feel the claws of self-hatred settling deep within the fleshiest parts of my skin i often look to my books. after the writers event in suffolk it wasn’t my journal i reached for, or my phone but the book i had been carrying around for the past few weeks “just incase.” i dont always know why i do it, sometimes its a means of escape, other times its to understand but i think this time i wanted a distraction.

gods bits of wood by sembene ousmane is a senegalese novel based on the historical railroad strike in colonial west africa in 1947. the novel looks at this event through a fictional lens placing an emphasis on the individual struggle within a collective. taking place in three different locations: dakar, thies and bamako we get to know the people struggling with the strike. each location brings a new conflict, a new character to learn. a favourite of mine was the curious little girl ad’jibd’ji who is always searching for answers people are reluctant to give her. i love the moments where you see yourself in books a lot of her curiosity felt like my own. she was also the daughter of the infamous bakayoko who is the spirit and crux of the strike, the man who is either mentioned with adoration or contempt. by the time we meet him we are already over half way through the novel and he appears almost god like to us.

the families battle against french colonists, the evil railway company board, bribes, threat of starvation and dehydration and the powerful force that is fear. how do you keep good faith when you stare at the hunger settling in on your families faces and bodies, the hunger making itself known in your own body? the men had a difficult job but it was evident through the multiple women sembene focuses on (n’deye touti, ramatoulaye and mame sofi to name a few) the women had the short end of the stick.

i started reading this book at the beginning of april, bought it on vinted after seeing it come up multiple times in different blogs about senegelese novels. at first i was unmoved by the characters i knew so much about them but also nothing at all. the lack of a main character (who’s thoughts i usually use to root me in a novel) was difficult for me and i found the pacing to be slower than i like. the night before the writers festival i spoke on my bookstagram about how i think im going to stop reading.

but then i went to the ink festival in suffolk (i wont go into detail but you can read my experience here) and since then i haven’t been able to put the book down. i finished the last half the book in an evening.

maybe i returned to the novel with the heaviness of my blackness in my bones. maybe after being made to feel like i didn’t belong with all these writers and performers- maybe even just knowing that my own writing style often diverges from normal structures, maybe all of this made me see the book with fresh eyes, all of a sudden i didn’t need to know the intimate details of these characters, i knew what they thought about their french bossess. how racism sits with them, angers them and there is no where to put it. nowhere to hold it except inside. maybe the chapter where one of the characters (sounkaré) is described as "aging so much in the past few weeks that he was almost unrecognisable. his eyeballs had whitened into lifelessness, his heavily lined face had crumpled until it looked like a dried out fig. […] he was accustomed to loneliness, but this absolute solitude was gnawing at his mind.” it just moved something in me. broke something even.

the truth is i was unfamiliar with a writing style like sembene’s, giving us bits and pieces of everyones life, allowing the reader to follow on just enough to know what is happening but not enough to be fully secure- but is that not what a strike hitting a community does? i remember when the university teachers were striking in my first year and there was this general buzz of uncertainty. every other conversation was based on it. we’d ask each other what classes were the worst effected, how much free time you had now. we’d soothe those amongst us who worried about their grades, their participation marks and whether they’d pass. admittedly all i wanted to know was whether we’d get money back from our student loans because of our impacted time. i didn’t really know what was going on but i stood behind and supported the teachers despite it.

and that same steadfast belief is displayed here in the novel. the french managers who spoke down on their employees likening them to nothing more than screaming toddlers, who assumed that there was not a bright light in any of their brains. who refused to learn the language of the countries they were occupying, believed that the french coming to senegal was the best thing to happen to everyone. white people in the continent was the saving grace they didn’t know they needed. of course theres the expectation for everyone to speak / learn french. they used the same colonial tactics to try and trick the workers into agreeing to end the strike. but i think the most telling thing about this book is the fact that before this current strike, there was a previous failed strike attempt that is spoken about with a graveness that transcends explanation. the fathers and elders of the workers currently striking remembered the loss and bloodshed to them it was a warning but to the younger generation it was incentive to keep on fighting. its clear what the message is, the spirit of ubuntu: i am because you were. the elephant never forgets and neither do we.

i understood, finally, that this is what it means to write as a collective and for a collective. the authors note in the beginning of the novel is for the union workers, the men and women who walked out of work october tenth 1947 and didn’t return until after the ninteenth of march 1948. “their example was not made in vain. since then, africa has made progress.”

i had sought this book out because i wanted a distraction instead i found understanding and reassurance. i wonder if the festival didn’t play out the way it would i have come to the same conclusion when i finished the novel? i’d like to think so. i do think things start picking up after halfway through the book and everything that seems like just information the pace changes and we start to see the fruits of their labour.

theres so much to pull out from this book. so much to talk about- religion for the most part plays a huge role in this novel. both islam and christianity are two religious pillars of faith that are engrained in the communities. the author makes it very clear that both religious leaders are against the strike and work closely with the french government. after a particularly bad incident with ramatoulaye (involving a ram and a fire) ismaïla the imam not only insults her (calls her stubborn and pigheaded) but also goes as far as to tell the chief of police to act unsatisfied to scare her into apologising to her older brother (who was the owner of the ram.) he tells her that her behaviour is not worthy of her lineage and chastises her for her conduct- mind you, this is a grown ass woman.

“people like these two are neither friends or relatives. they would kiss the behind of toubabs ¹for a string of medals and everyone knows it.”

ramatoulaye the “pig headed” and “stubborn” woman stands her ground and doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t allow herself to be insulted or be spoken down on. refuses to apologise to either the chief of police or her fuckass brother. i think this specific line too is very telling, most religious leaders in africa will bend and will sell you out to the white man. in a heartbeat too. the only person in the entire novel that i think has an authentic relationship with his religion is fa keïta who is forcibly imprisoned into a camp in bamako. he is a witnesses cruel treatment of his people and his kin. treatment that is so evil and twisted that for the first time he questions his own faith,

“but if god is just, how can he let men be treated so? in all my life, and in the lives of my parents we have done no wrong to anyone- why then should we be treated so?”

great question actually. if any african pastor can answer this without saying: its all a test. god gives us hardships so we can thrive or that it is just “the will of god” or any bullshit excuse that makes hardship just something we must endure for ease in a fareaway land AFTER we die? id be willing to talk. (not really this is sarcasm pls dont talk to me about this. we will never agree and i won’t waste my breath)

the (african) priests even go as far to say that before the white people came they had nothing, did nothing, couldn’t build anything (“not even a needle!”) but after they came their communities flourished and now everyone wants to strike against them? and to quote they said its “madness and you would do better to be thanking god for having brought them among us and bettered our lives with the benefits of civilisation an their science.”

i’m sure lol.

i just dont see how gods plan must be so rooted in the hardship and complacency of black people lmao. like the fact that it is a genuine thought process that is spread amongst christians in and outside of church that white people in africa “saved us” sooo…just… just so we’re clear when we say they “saved us” is that after the genocide, mass murder of our people, slavery, encampments, the murder of our healers and teachers, forced starvations, destruction of our land, abuse and assault of our women and men, murder of our children and of course the destruction of our own traditional religious beliefs- just so i know what being saved looks like so i can run in the other direction.

so far i have read books from kenya, zimbabwe, nigeria and botswana and the theme of religion is always so largely woven into the story. mostly critiquing it and thank fuck. because you cannot convince me that me and the colonist have the same heaven or hell? does that make sense to you? and i know theres the argument of like oh but i’m sure bad people who do bad things are in hell blah blah blah. like yes of course cecil john rhodes is in hell rn overturning in his grave.

but im sorrrrryyyy you mean to say that the same hell they threaten me with because i’m a munch (applications open btw.) is the same hell we got colonisers and rapists? please be serious now. like please.

just watch sinners and come back to me like watch it (and/) or weep bro idk.

but to bring it back to the novel at hand i think deep down even fa ketïa who briefly has a moment of - wait a second lol. what the fuck? what IS religion? and though he returns back to it with the fervour of a dying man taking days of solitude to cleanse himself- can you ever really return after witnessing cruelty like that?

having to ask yourself, but what did we do? int he face of all that question he turned his face up to the heavens and asked what did we do.

thats probably one of the most powerful moments in the entire novel. everyone is fighting for basic rights, the idea of pensions, getting breaks, fairer wages, family pay— the SAME thing that the white workers get and when the delegates of the strike ask the director of the company to tell them why not? like why cant we get what the white staff are already getting? the director gets so angry he goes red and starts spouting shit about how necessary france has been to them like okkkkk if u love ur country so much go back to it?

he is so angry that they even dared to ask that he goes full patriot and can’t even answer them.

which parallels fa keita asking his god, what did we do? and getting no answer but the glaring sun on his back and the threat of the whip near his face.

okay mr ousmane. i was unfamiliar with your gameeee my bad my bad. i really did enjoy this. i guess one thing i can thank them weirdddd ass people at the ink festival is that it made me pick up this book with new eyes. so thanks but also fuck you lol.

here is a list of what ive read so far! please leave me your recommendations id love to have them! im also happy to share what im planning on reading soon too!

completed:

• a question of power by bessie head (botswana)

• the river between by ngũgĩ wa thiong’o (kenya)

• under the udala trees by chinelo okparanta (nigeria)

• BONUS: blessings chukwuebuka ibeh (nigeria)

• nervous conditions tsitsi dangeremba (zimbabwe)

1. toubabs means white people or people from euoropean descent.