Introducing Gaile Parkin, Zambian Writer

I have discovered a new African author whose book, Baking Cakes in Kigali, I have added to my reading list. I avoided the temptation for an impulsive purchase, but that was hard, because the author, Gaile Parkin, is Zambian. I don't remember the last time I walked into a Borders and saw a novel by a Zambian (or another African author) displayed on the front table. Of course, it attracted my attention and I ended up reading the first chapter and putting a copy on hold.

Gaile Parkin's prose is clean and the story is accessible to any reader of English. The book was originally published in the UK (in January) and has just come out in the USA through an imprint of Random House. It is one of those books that open a window to Africa, and I like how Parkin luxuriates in the customs of her characters, first with the Tanzanian women we meet in chapter 1 who are the wives of expatriates involved in the rebuilding of Rwanda. What a great subject the author chose; who is not talking about the rebuilding of Rwanda right now, especially with all the opportunities in commercial farming, real estate, construction, education and other areas that are attracting outsiders? No wonder the characters in the novel are expatriates from many parts of the world--the United States, the United Kingdom, Tanzania, and other countries. Some come to volunteer, like the two women from America who live together and teach only at female institutions because they are feminists. This rebuilding of Africa means opportunities for both the Africans and foreigners, and in the process the wounds of history are exposed.

I liked the dialogue, although I suspect that I may end up not liking it as I read deeper into the book. Here is why. Dialogue is great if it moves the story forward, if it reveals certain key details, but it has to be natural, to represent how the characters speak. And so far it does all of this and more. But because the novel is functioning as a window into aid-receiving Africa to the outside world, there is a danger that the dialogue might be abused, used as vehicles of information of an expository nature. But let me give examples of the dialogue I liked so far:

"A cake business doesn't do well in a place where people have nothing to celebrate" (12). This is said during a conversation between Angel Tungaraza, the famous cake maker from Tanzania, whose husband works at a new institute of technology, and Mrs. Wanyika, the wife of the Tanzanian ambassador to Rwanda. The Rwandans, in this time of reconstruction depicted in the novel, have something to celebrate, the rebuilding is sending a positive vibe to the outside world, and gender issues there are reported to be some of the most progressive in Africa. The message "never again" is loud and clear. But sometimes it takes a work of fiction to delve under layers of superficiality, and this is what I hope that the novel will do; if not, oh well.

I also liked what a pretty Somali character (she had to be pretty) said:

"I don't tell people here that I'm from there [Somalia]. There are people who say that the Americans refused to come help Rwanda because of what happened in Mogadishu. It could happen that the Rwandans could blame me for the Americans not coming here or it could happen that Americans could hate me for their soldiers dying in my country" (16).

Here the author is using dialogue to brief us on this well-known historical fact (Black Hawk Down), and in moderation, such information is invaluable. In fact, I may choose to interpret it as that sad state of affairs that would cause a Zimbabwean to choose to say he is from South Africa because he fears that declaring that he is from Zimbabwe means that people will think that...who knows? But it happens, it really does. Used in moderation, such historical briefings are fantastic, but if dialogue ends up being used to give us loads of such information, it puts the reader off.

Stuff like this is just brilliant: "Angel Tungaraza was the only person in Kigali to go to for a cake for a special occasion" (190). And her cakes tell stories too. The cup cakes we see in chapter 1, which accompany the tea she is sharing with her fellow countrywoman, the ambassador's wife, are a mix of the colours of the Tanzanian flag. The ambassador's wife, worrying about her weight, does not eat even a quarter of her country's flag, doesn't even comment on the colours; you suspect that she doesn't even realize that these are the colours of her country's flag. She eats yellow though, which represents Tanzania's mineral deposits.

The only complaint I have so far is the way the author makes the characters use untranslated phrases and sentences of African language, particularly Swahili. If this is all she did, I would celebrate her, but she goes ahead and follow them up with their English translations in the same breath. No, don't do it! It makes the characters look idiotic, repeating themselves in whatever they say. That does not make linguistic sense. To me the characters are saying the same thing twice:

"Hodi! May we come in?"
"Karibuni! Welcome!" greeted Angel as a young woman and a girl entered the apartment.

I believe if we choose to share our beautiful languages with the world in our fiction, either we write completely in them, which, obviously is impractical but functional, or vice versa. We can give some flavor to our prose the same way sprays of French give flavor to an English text. Then go ahead and assume your readers would know what you are talking about; they have to learn to meet you half-way, but again some readers hate this; then do what Petina Gappah does in An Elegy for Easterly; her characters use a lot of Shona, and the author provides a narrative context that enables readers to understand what is being said. Sometimes I get the sense that some readers may not even notice the Shona, just as you are supposed not to notice the English, either. What you notice, what you understand, is the story.

Baking Cakes in Kigali, a welcome addition to African literature.