My workmates are in an uproar because I haven’t combed my hair for the past two weeks.  I don’t understand the hoo-ha.  I keep it clean and it smells like a ‘burst of flowers in summer’ thanks to a new hair care product line I found in Uchumi. With all the evil and injustice in the world, surely uncombed hair is the smallest crime of all.

 

After the meeting this morning, they raised Ushs. 15,000 for me to go to a salon for a makeover.  They beat me down with arguments of ‘what will the clients think’ and ‘the boss can’t look like this’ and ‘your mother would be so sad’ … I smiled sheepishly and said thank you. 

 

And I’m going to spend the money a book.

**********

 

Speaking of workmates, a colleague of mine, Mzee Eichs, has written a book on the Lord’s Resistance Army and Northern Uganda.

 

 

This book is a call to action to help our brothers and sisters in Africa that we can no longer ignore.

 —John Dau, president, John Dau Sudan Foundation, and coauthor, “God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir”

 

Peter Eichstaedt was my advisor for about a year recently and he remains a mentor.  First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army that is published by Lawrence Hill Books, is his second book.  It is released on the heels of more widely known books like Wizard of the Nile by Matthew Green and Girl Soldier by Faith McDonnell and Grace Akallo and is in danger of being lost in the sea of LRA-related literature.

 

I haven’t had a change to read First Kill Your Family, so I cannot offer a review as yet.  What I’m sure of is that Mzee Eichs is not prone to exaggeration and melodrama, like so many other authors writing about Africa.  I will certainly review it at the first available opportunity.

 

Mzee Eichs is now based at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting office in The Hague.  His blog, Outlander, in which he muses about the ICC, Africa, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and the world is available here.

**********

 

 

• Measuring Time by Helon Habila
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton (February 19, 2007)
• ISBN-10: 0393052516

 

I knew nothing about Helon Habila before I picked up Measuring Time for a ridiculously large sum of money at Aristoc Booklex in Kampala.  However no sooner had I left the shop, book in hand, than I was congratulated for my buy by a random mzungu.  I don’t remember exactly what he said to me because I was going gaga over his beautiful olive eyes and trying to get his phone number.  What he said was along the lines of good book … brilliant writer … new Nigeria … email address, I’m leaving town tomorrow …

 

Okay, so I didn’t get a date with Olive-r, but I did land myself a pretty good read with Measuring Time.

 

Habila spins an interesting tale of brotherhood, history, culture and longing. 

 

Measuring Time is primarily a story about family.  A dysfunctional family in which two sons – Mamo and LaMamo – hate their father for crimes committed against their mother before they were born.  They are nurtured by a strong willed aunt, herself from a broken home, and are mentored by a elder cousin whose virility makes him the favored ‘son’ in their home.  In the distance is an uncle, a kind hapless soul, who becomes surrogate dad to Mamo.

 

Measuring Time is about the futility of love and yearning.  The main protagonist, Mamo, is a twin caught in a timeless world of duality and emptiness.  He is the weaker twin and his ailments confine his dreams to his mind, while his brother travels much of West Africa in search of adventure, fortune and ultimately, his death.

 

Mamo’s restlessness, coupled with his lack of action, are a reflection on the rest of the Nigerian society in which he lives.  Habila paints a picture of a society at crossroads, struggling with the complexities of its colonial past and striving to move past the horrors of a brutal military regime into a stable future.

 

I enjoyed Measuring Time immensely.  I suppose it was Mamo’s wanderlust – not just the longing for travel to new places, but the longing for travel to a new reality and a new self – that appealed to me.  I can identify with wanting to get away, not just from here, but from the here.  The yearning for a transformation that is outside my comprehension.

 

He waited for something, anything, to happen, and as he waited he measured time in the shadows cast by trees and walls, in the silence between one footfall and the next, between one breath and the next, in the seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months that add up to form the seasons.

 

… once he had waited for death, and once he and his brother had waited for fame and adventure, but now he wasn’t sure anymore what he waited for.

 

Measuring Time is a good book, with solid writing and interesting narrative.  Sure, there are points at which it seems preachy and a tad sanctimonious, but on the whole, I recommend it with full stars.

 

***Reporting back to the Mother Ship at Siphoning Off A Few Thoughts.  I’m done with the challenge of six, but still have plenty more to go.