>>REVIEW
BLUE CLAY PEOPLE: SEASONS ON AFRICA’S FRAGILE EDGE
William Powers
Bloomsbury USA, 292 pp.
A few months before my trip to Kenya, a good friend warned me: "Africa will change you." It did. But how Africa changed me isn’t tangible – it’s as if something within has shifted and a new window in my soul has opened. William Powers’ Blue Clay People beautifully illustrates how Africa can transform you, move you and shake the foundation of your belief system.
Blue Clay People is Powers’ personal account of his two-year journey as an aid-worker in Liberia, located on the West Coast of Africa. Powers’ first posting to Africa in 1999 comes with the mandate to "fight poverty and save the rainforest" in Liberia’s corrupt and fragile culture.
His honest, transparent and sensitive narrative and his ability to describe Liberia’s culture from within makes us feel like we’re actually tagging along. His openness in sharing his emotional journey from culture shock to eventually moving to the culture’s rhythm, makes us close witnesses to Powers’ compelling transformation.
Before leaving for Liberia, Powers is engaged to a wonderful woman that he loves. But the challenges of a long-distance relationship set in two very different realities and her western desire for a diamond ring, "blood diamonds" that Powers has grown to despise, is the last wedge that breaks them apart. He eventually becomes intimate with a Liberian woman who despite her intelligence, hopes and dreams has had to put her life on hold due to civil war, poverty and illness.
Powers speaks of the heart and from the heart, of African and Western politics, of history, of the environment and of the people that struggle to survive and truly live. He is a master at weaving his perceptions, feelings, observations and facts into one great story with anecdotes that are at times funny and at other times profoundly disturbing.
In his narrative of African and Western politics, Powers elucidates how the quest of western civilization to "help" Africa has failed dramatically and to the unfortunate detriment of the peoples of Africa. He speaks of the lavish consumer frenzy of western civilization and how it encourages industries that support militias. For instance, he makes the link between the western consumer who has purchased diamonds or timber products and furniture originating in Liberia and the brutal violence and death of innocent children, women and men.
In his honest exposé, Powers also explores some of the failings and challenges of aid-work and how aid-workers, to some extent, have become the new colonists of Africa. One eloquent example that there is more to aid-work than simply establishing policies and targets to meet, is that of the swamp-rice paddy song. In Powers’ mandate to feed the people, communities are given food as well as crop seeds to help them develop sustainable food production so as to eliminate dependency. On one of Powers’ ritual visits to project communities, he is devastated and frustrated to see that the rice hasn’t been planted in the village of Vanjahtown. When he enquires about this, he is told that it’s because the people don’t have a working song for planting swamp-rice. A song is quickly created and then performed throughout the village. The next day, a dozen of the villagers are planting seedlings while singing the new song.
It becomes increasingly evident as we journey through Liberia in the company of Powers’ words, that if we are to help the peoples of Africa, then we need to listen and incorporate African culture into aid-work policy. It also becomes evident that western civilization has dramatically failed in its quest to rebuild Africa, partly because it has tried to do so in its own image and partly because of its constant greed for economic growth and control.
One of the greatest lessons that Powers embodies from his journey to Africa is the notion of "enough." "It is elusive, but it exists, and Chief Wah and many of Liberia’s simplest people know where it is, even if they slip below it during the hungry season, during the warring season. Enough is food, water, clean air, and community. Enough is the rhythm of a talking drum under a moon that speaks to you through its light. Enough is listening to nature rather than dominating it. We in the West need to relax and ratchet down to the joyful place called enough; many Liberians need to increase their well-being until we meet there, in a sustainable world."
Anyone who has ever considered aid-work in Africa should definitely read Blue Clay People. Anyone who has never considered aid-work should also definitely read this book. Why? Because if you can’t go to Africa and be transformed, then perhaps this book will help you think about your consumer lifestyle and contemplate: how many Africans did I kill today? |
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