I've deviated slightly from Uganda-specific novels and am thoroughly enjoying The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, a tale of white missionaries in the Congo. I feel this tangent is justified though, because as my geography of the region improves, I realise that Uganda borders this giant country, known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo:
The family in the story move, in 1959, to a rural location along the Kwilu River, (to the far left on the map). I'm really enjoying the different narrative voices in the story, especially Adah's and her propensity for creating palindromes; but I was particular disturbed by the following passage:
Cooking meals here requires half the day, and cleaning takes the other half. We have to boil our water because it comes from the stream, where parasites multiply in teeming throngs. Africa has parasites so particular and diverse as to occupy every niche of the body: intestines small and large, the skin, the bladder, the male and female reproductive tracts, interstitial fluids, even the cornea. In a library book on African public health, before we left home, I found a drawing of a worm as thin as a hair meandering across the front of a man's startled eyeball. I was struck through with my own wayward brand of reverence: praise by the lord of all plagues and secret afflictions! If God had amused himself inventing the lilies of the field, he surely knocked His own socks off with the African parasites. (p76)
Now I am thankful for a number of things:
- This is a work of fiction
- It was set in the fifties
- It is at least a thousand kilometres away from where we are heading
- I have now had all my jabs
Have you had yours?!
