Book review: Pangolin by Barbara Clark

Eric Ngalle Charles

You cannot go to the farm while menstruating. How would Gracie know when nature would leak down her thighs, soiling the earth? And just like that, a curse is placed upon the land. Did Gracie visit the Shamba when she was bleeding? I will leave this for you to find out.

I read, and my heart raced, thinking our protagonist would be banished from the village.

Pangolin by Barbara Clark had a sluggish start, but by the end of the first chapter, the story and the characters caught up with me. I was immersed in the world of the protagonist, Gracie. I became a long-necked guinea fowl peering around familiar places, uncles, aunts, and a homestead with a hive of activities.

Stones

Frankly, Pangolin took me down memory lane. A time when we could see the world through the holes in our trousers, armed with stones in our pockets, catapult at the ready, planting fields and waiting for the rains, and then it came.

Harvesting crops, and monkeys stealing maise plants. This was a new one for me. The writing here is vivid. I saw monkeys jumping through leafy branches like school children, stealing maise and disappearing.

“Big lumps of white giant hailstones the size of shillings.’’ It was like the thunder scene in King Lear. “Can the hailstones kill you. And lightning- would it burn you to ashes or would it leave a charred corpse like burnt charcoal?’’ Was this one of the wraths Gracie had unleashed upon her people? I wasn’t too worried about being hit by lightning. What about those houses whose roofs were made of thatch?

As you delve through the pages of this novel, you will encounter passages from a young girl’s life, the return of her friend and childhood sweetheart from the mines, and his recounting of his experience. Gracie wishes to be a boy and run to work in the mines. Darkness lurks.

As the story unfolds, we understand why the mine returnee grew thinner. He had contracted Aids. “I want to squeeze his hand. He is talking like a sack of rice that has split and the grains are pouring out all over the floor.’’

At this point, my heart was already broken. Barbara Clark feeds our senses with plenty of suspense—childhood dreams versus the realities. As life ebbs away from her friend, she is even more shocked when she visits him on her fourteenth birthday. I will leave this for you to find out.

Techniques

“The bucket and the egg were followed by chicken feathers scattered, marks chalked on our floor, healthy tomato plants snapped.’’ Here, Barbara Clark dabbles with some of the techniques of the Russian short story writer Anton Chekhov, and how the bizarre can have the simplest of explanations.

As the story thunders forward, we meet the Mzungu, whom Gracie describes as ‘The pink man with hair like wilted maise.’ Through their conversation, we understand what it means when two worlds meet. We laugh at Gracie’s childhood naivety. And we are left pondering the role of the Mzungu as the school fees provider, the dictionary giver, the employer, and the family income collapsing after the Mzungu went home.

How does the young mind process tragedies like death? The answer comes from Bishop Joshua. “God is just thinning the forest. The trees left standing will produce new saplings to grow in their spaces.

Domestic violence and the role of patriarchy, snakes and thieving monkeys, an abusive headmaster and a corrupt police officer, the novel Pangolin has it all. The taste of futility of dreams, the leering hands of a stranger in the gulley, “I didn’t even learn his name. I didn’t know where he came from, or who he was, I just felt like I belonged there lying with him and I thought he felt it too.’’

And the resolve and determination of a girl child to change her status in life for the better. The potential suitor with twenty cows, the older widower, is a kind man, but Gracie is only fifteen. Why are her parents so determined to give her to the highest bidder? Gracie wants to pursue a career as a teacher. Did her best-laid plans go awry? You must read the novel to find out. And in case you are wondering, the cattle header suitor wouldn’t provide any cows.

Gracie was uncircumcised. Gracie had allowed a boy to touch her. Gracie was defiled.

Messages

Like a river snaking through corridors of hope and despair, I love the messages within the spine of this novel. Suddenly, we find ourselves in Dar es Salaam, the hustle and bustle of a capital city. Danger lurks in the air. Who should we trust and entrust? And to scrape the bottom of the barrel, Gracie tries to prostitute herself. The sweaty fat man is left dangling after dropping money down the protagonist’s cleavage, and we see her skipping, leaping,
and hopping like a kangaroo down the road.

I appreciate writers who paint pictures; Barbara Clark has done so with Pangolin.

At the novel’s start, I was distracted by too many characters and innovative words, but I soon became familiar with every element of the story. The themes of girl power, sisters sticking together, and women’s role and place in our society are trumpeted well in Pangolin. The duality of readership and audience, African and European, left me with more questions.

“Yes. They were always suspicious of her. She was brought up by white people. She could read and write. She came from a faraway place. People thought she was a witch.” As you get lost within the quills of Barbara Clark’s Pangolin, I’m heading towards Wrexham searching for a milking cow.

Pangolin by Barbara Clark is published by Olympia Publishers.