A Nigerian smoke monster

I’ve been rereading Forest of a Thousand Daemons, a Nigerian novel published by D.O. Fagunwa in 1939 and translated from Yoruba to English in 1982 by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Forest of a Thousand Daemons is thought to be the first novel written in the Yoruba language and one of the first to be written in any African language.

In its English translation, the language and supernatural events of the story echo passages in the Bible, Shakespeare, Pilgrim’s Progress, Paradise Lost, and Sir Richard Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights. But on page 11, I was startled to find a passage that reminded me more than anything else of the TV series Lost. Akara-ogun or Compound-of-Spells, the great hunter who is the protagonist of the novel, is speaking:

It happened one day that my father prepared himself and set off to hunt. After he had hunted a long while, he felt somewhat tired and sat on a tree stump to rest. He was not long seated when, happening to look up, he saw the ground in front of him begin to split and smoke pour upwards from the rent. In a moment the smoke had filled the entire area where my father sat so thickly that he could not see a thing; all about him had turned impenetrably black. Even as he began to seek a way of escape he observed that the smoke had begun to fuse together in one spot and, before he could so much as blink, it fused completely and a stocky being emerged sword in hand and came towards my father. My father took to his heels instantly but the man called on him to stop and began to address him thus:

‘Can you not see that I am not of the human race? I arrived even today from the vault of the heavens and it was on your account that I am come hither, my purpose being to kill you. Run where you will this day; kill you I most resolutely will.’

In Lost, too, the smoke monster boils out of a vent in the ground. It is the alter ego of the malevolent Man in Black (who appears in the current season in the form of the late John Locke), and it can take human form. In a recent episode, one scene is shot from the point of view of the monster itself, whose reflection you can see in the window of a house. When it take the form of John Locke, the first thing it does is to bend over and pick up a machete.

Mr. Eko, a Yoruba man from Nigeria (played by the Yoruba actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), is killed by the smoke monster in a previous season. Just a coincidence? Hmmm.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

William Kamkwamba is a young man from Malawi who learned about windmills from a library book, then built his own and supplied his family with electricity for the first time. I saw him interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and picked up his book (written with journalist Bryan Mealer), thinking it would be a nice relief from some of the grimmer books on Africa that I’ve been reading lately.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind turned out to be one of the more interesting African memoirs I’ve read (and I’ve read quite a few). It also told me things I didn’t know about Malawi, where I spent a couple of weeks in 1993.

In one paragraph on page 77, Kamkwamba explains how deforestation led to poverty in his country (the thesis of Collapse by Jared Diamond). He also makes clear that although Hastings Banda, the former “president for life,” was a feared dictator, he was someone who understand the importance of agriculture. His successor, an urban businessman, did not, and the result was a devastating famine.

The reason to read the book, though, is to appreciate Kamkwamba’s determination and ingenuity. Forced to leave school because his family could not afford the fees (a common tragedy in Africa), he spent his days scouring his neighborhood and a local scrapyard for junk that could help him realize his dream.

Over the next few weeks, my scrap pieces kept revealing themselves like a magic puzzle. At one point, I realized I needed more PVC pipe, so without Gilbert’s father looking, we dug out the drainage pipe from his shower stall. Inside, it was covered witih several inches of slime that I had to scrape with my fingers. It smelled horrible.

Once it was clean and dry, I took the pipe home and cut it down the middle with a bow saw. Next I made a long grass fire behind the kitchen, then tossed the pipe atop the flames. When it began to bubble and curl, I rolled it off and pounded it flat. I then cut four blades at four feet each. I wanted to go ahead and connect them to the tractor fan rotor, but I had no nuts and bolts. So I spent two weeks in the scrapyard searching every piece of metal. But I had only one size wrench, which was too large for most of the nuts on the machines. To compensate, I wrapped a bicycle spoke inside the wrench hole and managed to loosen a few. However, most of them were so rusted they stripped against the tool or refused to even budge.

Gilbert then offered to help. He went to Daud’s shop with fifty kwacha and bought a big bag of nuts and bolts. I was so grateful. But I still had no money to hire a welder to connect my pieces. Then one day while in the trading center, I had an amazing stroke of luck....

Teddy Roosevelt and the meteorite

I read and enjoyed Jim Rasenberger’s book America, 1908, which tells the story of the year the Model T was introduced, the Wright brothers made a series of record-breaking flights in the US and France, and two attempts were made on the North Pole.

It was also a significant year for meteorites. An estimated 80 million trees were knocked over when a big meteorite exploded near the Tunguska River in Siberia. And in the US, a smaller meteorite nearly ended the second term of Theodore Roosevelt prematurely.

In an interview that summer for the magazine The American, Roosevelt said several times, “I’m through now,” though he still had six months left to serve. As Rasenberger notes, “He was closer to being through than he realized.”

Just past midnight, August 24, as Roosevelt slumbered in his bed, a small meteorite bored into earth’s atmosphere and blazed across a clear starlit sky toward Oyster Bay. Secret Service agents who were posted outside heard a hiss, then saw a flash that bathed Sagamore Hill and its lawn and tennis court in intense light. The meteorite landed less than a hundred yards from the house, just missing the president of the United States. It exploded into a hundred fiery pieces and disintegrated into dust.

Madagascar chocolate

Earlier this week I wrote about Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin, and posted a love poem from Madagascar at Words Without Borders, in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Now, by one of those odd convergences, Seth Godin and Madagascar and Valentine’s Day have come together again. Godin says he doesn’t do consulting, but apparently he’s been talking to the people who make Madécasse Chocolate, “the only imported chocolate made on the continent with local beans.” (Well, Madagascar isn’t technically on the continent, but it’s considered part of Africa.)

As it turns out, Madécasse is based in Brooklyn, not far from where I live, and the chocolate is sold, among other places, at one of my favorite independent bookstores, McNally Jackson.

At any rate, Godin’s point is that you can’t market effectively by being all things to all people. Pick a story and go with it.

For example, the Madécasse story about made by Africans in Africa is very powerful, at least as powerful as fair trade, if not more (they keep four times as much money in Africa by selling a bar as they would if they just sold beans to other companies).

If that’s true, then why not put your workers on the label? Big beautiful pictures that would be an amazing juxtaposition against all the other abstract stuff in the store. Tell me the story of the worker on the back. Make each one different and compelling. Packaging as baseball card. I wouldn’t put a word on the front, just the picture.  Now I not only eat something that tastes good, but I feel good. You’ve made it personal. The story on the back is about a real person, living a better life because I took the time to buy her chocolate instead of someone else’s. When I share the chocolate, I have something to say. What do you say when you give someone a chocolate bar? This package gives you something to say.

The illustration I’ve borrowed here is apparently Godin’s idea of what the Madécasse package should look like. I think it works, and I’ll be interested to see if the company goes with the idea.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

Over the weekend I bought Seth Godin‘s new book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? On Monday I finished reading it, and in the evening I went to hear the author at the Borders in Columbus Circle, where he was appearing with Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art.

The idea of Linchpin is an attractive one. At a time when the economy has drummed into us that no one is indispensable, it’s appealing to be told that we may be indispensable after all, or that this book can tell us how to become indispensable. But the book quickly makes it obvious that it’s not so easy. Career survival requires being genuine, creative, and willing to take risks, says Godin. In fact, it requires being a kind of artist, and artists are subject to blocks.

The reason for that block is what both Godin and Pressfield call Resistance, and Resistance is very hard to overcome. Facing it requires facing our fears, and as Pressfield put it, you may find that the thing that scares you the most is the thing your soul needs. It’s easier to avoid doing difficult creative work by procrastinating on Twitter or Facebook or by keeping busy with routine, following-the-map tasks.

How do you overcome Resistance? Welcome your ideas, says Godin, even the bad ones. (I was reminded of Anne Lamott’s chapter on why “shitty first drafts” are a good thing.) Set deadlines, meet them, and move on to the next thing. Shipping all the time, he says, is the way to avoid burning out.

In the end, said Pressfield, he found that the pain of not doing the work he wanted to do was greater than the pain of doing it. Similarly, Godin said that if he ever stopped shipping, he would have to become a bank teller, and then he would have to blow his brains out.

Even if you make a habit of overcoming your Resistance and doing the creative work you were meant to do, there is no guarantee that it will make you money. It has made money for Godin, but he isn’t fooled by that into thinking it will do the same for everyone. After twenty years of studying successful people, Godin said, the only thing he’s found that they have in common is that they’re successful.

In Linchpin he makes it clear that trying to make your art pay can debase it, and that the best course for many people may be to bring their genuine, creative selves to both their day job and their novel—but without any expectation that the two can be combined.