Tuesday,May 02,2006
Kwame Nkrumah: Still Remembered 34 Years On
Most of us come to this world and go without anyone remembering us after a few years, save a few close relatives an.... By Issaka K. Souaré
Friday,Mar 03,2006
RHETORICS OF VIOLENCE IN ALEX LA GUMA’S NOVELS
Introduction In literature, violence has not always been portrayed physically or starkly especially in classic.... By Dr Blessing Diala-Ogamba
Thursday,Dec 29,2005
Book Presentation: twentytwelve (fiction)
The year is 2012. The global conflict that first manifested itself in the attack on the twin towers and broadened a.... By Andrew keogh
Sunday,Aug 21,2005
Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal
Excerpt from Chapter 6, 'Not a Visiting Apprentice.On May 22nd, with bags and trunks packed, Tiger and Abigail took.... By Adeyinka Makinde
Thursday,Jul 28,2005
Chinua Achebe - Pure and Simple: An Oral Biography
Chinua Achebe: Pure and Simple approaches the famous writer – who has been dubbed “the father of Africa.... By Phanuel Akubueze Egejuru (Reviewer: Anne Serafin)
James Leonard-Williams has variously lived and worked in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Yemen, India, Qatar and Oman. He now lives in Morocco where he teaches English and management as well as writes and broadcasts for RFI.He is also a partner in local architectural practice.
The plight of poor Moroccans is little understood, even by some Moroccans. Although the shantytowns in the cities came under the spotlight following the bombings in Casablanca in May 2003, few affluent or educated Moroccans know anything about them. They know even less about the rural shantytowns where a large percentage of the population live on less than ten dirhams a day in appalling conditions.
In order to try and get some sort of insight into their problems, I decided to live there, and also tried to live as they did. Having spent many years living and working with aid organisations and NGOs, and criticising them for the way in which they live in the most luxurious hotels and try to tackle problems from the ‘outside’, often missing the real point entirely, it seemed hypocritical to do the same thing myself. It is all very easy to pontificate on the problems of living on less than a dollar-a-day from the comfort of the Sheraton Hotel bar. It is quite another thing to actually live like that for eight months. The experience was deeply moving and I ended up with a very different perspective on life altogether.
I should add that there was another ‘agenda’, in that my wife originally came from just such a place as I wanted to study, and one might argue that this would affect my view of life. Perhaps, but I think not. It did enable me to be accepted in the place as part of the clan (a dubious honour) and as such I was probably able to see things that, as a total stranger, I would have been excluded from seeing - other than as an outside observer. From this experience, I have ended up ‘understanding’ my family better than I would ever have done had I carried on a ‘normal’ sort of life, and just visited them on high days and holidays. Curiously it has made me like and respect some of them far more as much as dislike others more, and the passage of time has done little to change these views, rather, it has reinforced them.
I also accept the likely criticism that my position was not 100% genuine in that even if I had no money, and lived as the local inhabitants did, I was not quite the same as them. I had both a passport and a qualification, which enabled me to walk away from the situation at any time I chose. It was therefore impossible for me to completely understand the feelings of frustration, hopelessness and despair that many of them feel and about which they can actually do nothing. However, Fatima had
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managed to 'escape' from the place at an early age. She had absolutely no formal education, cannot read or write, but has still managed to forge a reasonable life for herself as well as maintaining a fair proportion of her family at the same time. Having her interpretation on things proved invaluable and I would have understood little or nothing without her.
Living in this gem of Moroccan rural life for eight months has been, above all, a somewhat sad experience. This is not least because of the realisation that there are people in the world who, do not only want to learn or improve their lives but seem to actively resist any attempts to do so. At the beginning of my visit I was full of sympathy and concern that nobody (officially) seemed to care or be prepared to do anything for such people at all. Eight months later I held a somewhat revised view. A few months away from the reality and then a return visit, was to see the village in a completely different light altogether. For a start, the sheer squalor of the existence was painfully obvious. One wants to scream, “Why the hell doesn’t anything ever work in this bloody place? Why has nobody, ever, got a match or a lighter? Why, every evening, when it gets dark, does everyone go around bleating for a candle and have to send a seventy year old woman half a kilometre, in total darkness, to get one? Why, when anyone wants to have a shit, is there no water? Why, why, why?
There really is no simple answer. None of these things, and the myriad of others, depend on there being something they don’t have. None of this is something that the Local Authority or some well-meaning NGO could cure with a goodly dollop of cash. It is as though every dawn is the start of a new life and everything in it has to be evolved from scratch.
A year previously I had been sceptical of the authorities’ attitude towards settlements like Benshasha. “Surely something could be done for such places?” You will never be able to understand, or even the begin to, from looking at it from the outside. You have to have an open mind to look at it from the inside. You have to empty your mind and see the reality; sometimes it is awful, sometimes it is frustrating, always it made me stop and think.
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