Stay with me by Ayobami Adebayo

I read this book in one sitting and at the end of it, I just felt it was too much to take in all at once. A whole lot of possible human tragedy to process in a few hours. The book is about a woman (Arinola) who is led to believe that she is unable to have children when it is actually her husband (Akin) who is not able to. She then has to go through a series of humiliating experiences including having the grooms family choose another wife for him (Funmi), deception and eventually having that wife live with them. 

OWNERSHIP

One of the themes that comes up repeatedly is the idea of ownership, something I've found a lot of people feel is concomitant to relationships. Arinola keeps saying that a husband can have many wives but a child can only have one mother. She is driven by a need to have someone to call her own and goes through a lot of hurt to satisfy this need or desire. Once again, this idea of unclenching instead of holding to someone or something for dear life resurfaces; where we've seen through our experiences that when we let something that was meant for us in the first place go, then it will come back to us. Arinola learns this the hard way through the birth of her third child who is called Rotima which translates to 'stay with me', who she loses but finds again fifteen years later and who now goes by the name Timi. The author creatively reiterates this idea through names that a child can not be compelled to ownership even if she is given the name Rotima, ironically, it is only when the child sheds that name where she finds her way to her mother again. A person can not be owned, and as hard as it is for parents to accept, neither can a child. This is due to the fact that everyone has their own consciousness and it is that consciousness that separates us as individual human beings. 

A poem from The Dream in the Next Body by Gabeba Baderoon:

How to find something lost

Let the lost thing, or the loss itself call to you

There is a reciprocity in vanished objects

That make them want to rejoin you

Long after you stop searching,

Lost chances, lost causes, lost loves

Circle back

GRIEF

Arinola goes through pseudocyesis (phantom pregnancy) because of her desperation to bear a child. When I was reading the parts of the book that described her pseudocyesis, I couldn't help but think how her experience shows all the five steps of grief  (Kubler-Ross); denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Grief has in my mind always followed a loss, but there Arinola was, grieving something she never had. 

LOVE

'It's the truth- stretched but still true. Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond it's limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only one that exist?'

This was not something unique to Akin who did not present his true self to Arinola, of him not being able to have children, in the first place suffered greatly for the decision and had to then resort to going to extremes to maintain the inaccurate presentation of himself. This inaccurate presentation is soon exposed and he loses the love of his life in turn. As well meaning as Akin was, he paid tenfold for his deception. I was watching a series where this woman goes on a date and the guy just reveals way too much on the first date. The woman complains to a friend and says something about how a guy must at least wait until date 4 to reveal so much about himself. I found this scene hilarious and 'date 4' has become an inside joke with friends. As much as it is important to not scare people off the first time you meet them, it is also crucial that if that relationship forms then everything that could affect your beloved be disclosed. 

Love is explored in such great detail in the book and in the early chapters of the book, the author writes about how there are things that love cannot bear; that it can break into a thousand pieces under certain loads but even when it is a thousand pieces at your feet, it doesn't mean it ceases to be love. People on the average crave wholeness and many people look for that wholeness in love, but what is interesting is that the wholeness desired can very well come from something which of itself is not whole. 

'I was not stupid. I understood that it was a matter of time before Moomi showed up to make sure that Funmi started living in the house. If I fought with Funmi, it would only make things worse. Moomi could ask me to leave and though Akin kept telling me how much he loved me. I no longer believed him. But I wanted to believe him. I had no father, no mother and no sibling. Akin was the only person in the world who would really notice if I went missing. These days I tell myself that is why I stretched to accommodate every new level of indignity, so that I could have someone who would look for me if I went missing.'

I lament, all the indignities women have had to endure; in the name of love. I lament!

Kasi Love

But how will I find you?

Where did we have our first kiss?

Under the mistletoe of the township, the Apollo light at the corner

What was I doing when our eyes met for the first time?

You were competing with your friends, throwing rocks at the Apollo behind my house trying to break the plastic casing

How did you know it was time for you to go back into the house?

My mom said to be in when the Apollo came on

You see, you already know how to find me

When I first saw it, I knew it was his doing

Chuck Taylors swinging from their laces at the top of the Apollo lights

I followed the stars to find him

ALL the STARS

The Punctuation of Ending Love

When love ends it doesn't have to be, 

the exclamation marks of pregnant silences, broken photo frames, tears and 'all your crap is in the box at the door', to the left

the parenthesis of 'its not you, its me'

the question mark of 'what on earth just happened?'

the ellipses of runners who left the door open with none of the closure

the ampersand of I&J needing to undo and separate

When love ends, it can just simply be a period at the end of the story

Full stop. 

The Knock on the Door by Terry Shakinovsky and Sharon Cort

This book is about the Detainee's Parents Support Committee which was headed by Max and Audrey Coleman whose sons were detained by the apartheid government. It was a committee that helped to support families who went through the trauma of being woken up in the dead of night by the knock on the door and having a family member taken by the police. In a system where people were detained without trial or charge for that matter, were interrogated and tortured, where the families were not even informed where their family member was taken and where black families in particular did not have access to legal representation or knowledge; this committee fulfilled a huge role. The committee made sure that information travelled from families to detainees and also provided basic necessities to detainees such as clothing and food and support. 

The reason why I liked this book in particular was that I was learning so much that I have had little knowledge of in general and it is always necessary to fill in the gaps in our minds because it is in the details where we are reminded of our past as South Africans and it is the details that reinforce how to not easily forget what happened before 94.

Max was said to be quite particular about documenting everything and that information was used during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that took place after 94 which was really cool for me. As much as I think the TRC had its limitations, the fact that Max had the foresight to keep record was really great and provided the TRC a lot of the information it needed.

THE WAR ON CHILDREN

This chapter was the most interesting to me. Tomorrow, South Africa will be commemorating June 16, 1976 with a public holiday. This book went deep into just how badly black children were treated during apartheid. I mean, most of us are familiar with how thousands of children were massacred but there is a lot of information that I personally did not know which further widened my eyes.

'I don't think anywhere in the world has there been such a vicious, assertive action against youth and children as there was in South Africa'

The number of children that were detained is just shocking. The entire student body of Hlingwe School (1200) was arrested. I mean, wow! The youngest child who was detained was 9 years old and the book provides details on how, for example, a child walking to the shops was just picked up by the police just like that without the parents being informed.

'What does the world think of a government a third of whose political detainees are schoolchildren? and just how does an 11 year old threaten the security of the state, particularly this state with all its military might? This government, in releasing these children, is starting to admit it has no answers to such questions.' 

OPERATION PHAMBANE & AN EMERGENCY AWARD

Operation Phambane also offered a lot of insight pertaining the longest hunger strike in this country. The hunger strike was called Sidla Ekhaya meaning we eat at home which was a strike against detention without trial. It took place at Diepkloof prison and one of the detainees, Sandile Thusi, went 38 days without eating and left the prison bedridden and on oxygen. 

Black people, particularly those who got hurt during a protest, were not able to go to the hospital because the police would wait for the wounded there and then proceed to arrest them. Black people who were in need of medical care had to find other ways of getting it and the chapter called an emergency ward details how the DPSC worked around those restrictions and how a handful of skilled medical professionals placed themselves at risk to give black people the medical attention they needed. 

ASSASSINATIONS

South Africa's death squad is something most of us know quite a bit about and we also know anyone active in anti-apartheid activity would likely be gunned down in their driveway. David Webster suffered the same fate but I think what just highlighted the egregiousness of his murder was the fact that he was told in advance that he would be killed, in no uncertain terms, at a tea party (gathering) by a police officer; a week later he was dead. 

PRAVIN GORDHAN

When Pravin Gordhan was arrested for the third time of which he said that his detention was part of a winning advantage and having leverage over the ANC in the negotiating process. This reminded me of a poem from Azanian Love Song by Don Mattera. The poem is called Shattering Glass but I am only including the part of the poem that is relevant particularly to what Pravin said.

'Don't bargain with oppression

There's no time, man

Just no more time

for the black man

to fool around'

When I look at what South Africa is now and think of what Pravin said, I wonder what price was paid for bargaining with oppression. 

ON THE SIDE

Casspirs aka Hippos are these mine resistant army vehicles (right) that were used in South Africa in apartheid South Africa. One can imagine the fear these instilled in black people back then and also what their presence implied about black people; that black people were the enemy of the state and should be dealt with militantly. 'Geen genade' type vibes. This is nothing new as black people were referred to as 'terroriste'. Interestingly for me, a few years ago South African malls were being hit by criminals and the response was for one or two of these to be placed in Malls. So as I saw these, I wondered what other South Africans who saw them thought. I can grasp how this vehicle would not mean anything to white South Africans but how could it not send chills down the back of black South Africans who survived apartheid? I mean, how could those vehicles not illicit the same feelings that brought down the Rhodes statue? Why would a black government even use these as a scare tactic for a mall syndicate, Why not a bunch of GTI's with blinding blue lights which would be the most appropriate for the crime? I mean, really.