Our last afternoon in Lisbon, dad and I took the train out to the beach, to spend some time by the Atlantic with sand between our toes. It was really nice, lying there in the still summer-hot sun, reading, and taking short swims in the chilly Atlantic waves. A last pinch of summer, before we returned to the cold, darkening autumn of Stockholm.
I was reading “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver. It is a tale about an American missionary family’s destruction and slow recovery in and out of the deep Congo, from the late 1950s and onward. In a brutal and honest story, the modern history of DR Congo is told through the eyes of the mother and four daughters of the family. But within that, other stories are also told. A story of a war-traumatized, overly-dominant father and what that can do to a family. A story about sisterly and motherly love. A story about being white in Sub-Saharan Africa. A story of colonialism.
It is a good book. An important book. Especially the way she captures the complexities that arises Africa and the West meet. And just like Leah, one of the sisters, I wonder if the way this complexity has been dealt with thus far, on both sides, is even the tiniest bit constructive. That maybe we, the West and development workers in particular, are way too rigid in our definition of what development is. Maybe a step back is what is needed. A rebooting of both systems, in order for us to maybe better understand the similarities and differences between us. What should be changed, and what is good as it is.
It doesn’t give any answers, the book. But it is an interesting story. Kingsolver puts words to thoughts that I myself haven’t been able to verbalize, but still have felt for a long time. And she writes beautifully, with a language that sprawls, just like her characters.
Katja Malmborg 