The government has cleaned up Harare for the Queen of England's visit. 'The townships are too full of people, they said, gather them up and put them in the places the Queen will not see.' Four waves of people have settled on Easterly Farm since then, living on the margins in homes that will soon be destroyed.
Among them is Martha Mupengo. She has lost her wits, and gained a pregnancy. Who could be the baby's father, and what fate awaits mothers and children in this temporary, poverty-stricken town?
Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University, and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. She lives with her son Kush in Geneva, where she works as counsel in an international organisation that provides legal aid on international trade law to developing countries.
Reread (December 2020): I really enjoyed rereading this short story. It's just as good as the first time around, even though I had forgotten just how bleak it was. Martha Mupengo's fate is so heartbreaking, and she's probably the most interesting character in this story. Petina Gappah has created such a rich setting within so few pages that I could actually picture Martha wandering aimlessly through the streets of Easterly and lifting her dress and asking for 20 cents. I would actually read a whole novel about her, to get all the answers we so desperately need: where did she come from? what happened to her that made her lose her wits? what will happen to her baby?
Original review (January 2019): Before reviewing An Elegy for Easterly, I wanted to rant a little bit about publishing politics and my frustration with the lack of writers of color that get published. The well-known publishing house Faber is launching a special publishing programme to mark its 90th anniversary in 2019, featuring short stories, poetry and new branding.
Petina Gappah's An Elegy for Easterly is part of the Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes that present "masters of the short story form in a range of genres and styles." Gaby Wood, who helped with the selection of the 19 short stories in that series, says that "it’s been an incredible pleasure, and a privilege, to search for short stories among the extraordinary group of authors Faber has assembled throughout its history", she also claims that she has assembled a list of stories with "a range of genres and generations, a wide geographical span."
Ummm ... out of the 19 stories selected, 16 were written by white men and women from the US and the UK – HOW THE FUCK IS THAT "A WIDE GEOGRAPHICAL SPAN"? Are you actually kidding me? That writers of color (especially non-europeans or non-americans) don't get the love and attention from publishing houses they deserve is nothing new to me, but how can you have the audacity to give yourself credit for something you literally didn't do? This just pisses me off.
The 3 stories written by POC in Faber Stories are: 1. An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe) 2. Come Rain or Come Shine by Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan; even though he migrated to the UK at age 5 and considers himself British) 3. Cosmopolitan by Akhil Sharma (India; migrated to the US at age 8 and considers himself Indian-American)
This short list in itself shows that even 2/3 of the writers of color selected have some ties to the US and the UK ... "wide geographical span" my ass. I get the fact that publishers often focus on more popular and well-known authors because they know that people are more likely to pick up their work ... but honestly, that's a vicious cycle in itself. How are people supposed to get to know other authors if you decide not to publish them? Grrrr.
Anyways, RANT OVER, let's focus on this thought-provoking short story by Petina Gappah. She claims that she tries to base all of her stories on a true thing, and so An Elegy for Easterly is based on Operation Murambatsvina (Move the Rubbish), also officially known as Operation Restore Order. That was a large-scale Zimbabwean government campaign to forcibly clear slum areas across the country. The campaign started in 2005 and according to United Nations estimates has affected at least 700,000 people directly through loss of their homes or livelihood and thus could have indirectly affected around 2.4 million people.
And so, in An Elegy for Easterly, Gappah states that the government has cleaned up Harare for the Queen of England's visit. 'The townships are too full of people, they said, gather them up and put them in the places the Queen will not see.' Four waves of people have settled on Easterly Farm since then, living on the margins in homes that will soon be destroyed. Among them is Martha Mupengo. She has lost her wits, and gained a pregnancy. The story raises many poignant questions: who could be the baby's father, and what fate awaits mothers and children in this temporary, poverty-stricken town?
Petina Gappah tried to imagine the painful experiences people were going through at the time; she didn't want to portray Zimbabweans just as victims, since they are so much more than that, but, of course, she still had to show what it was like for this community to be under attack – not just from without, but also from within. An Elegy for Easterly shows the prejudices that exist within this community: the prejudice against women who are perceived to be barren (and thus the length they are willing to go to in order to get a child), the prejudice against people who are perceived to be crazy (and how no one looks after them).
She shows the harsh facts of married life, husbands cheating on their wives, men raping women. This is not a story for the faint of heart. An Elegy for Easterly depicts many unlikeable characters but only few of them lack resilience and inventiveness. I also find it fascinating to read about people and places that are different from what I'm used to. Reads like these open up the world to me and allow me to broaden my horizon. I hope that more stories from African writers will be picked up by successful publishers in the future and be made accessible to the public.
“An Elegy for Easterly”, Petina Gappah, Zimbabué, 2009
And so the government hid away the poverty, the people put on plastic smiles and the City Council planted new flowers in the streets. Long after de memories of the Queen’s visit had faded, and the broken arms of the arrested women were healed, Easterly Farm took root. The first wave was followed by a second, and by another, and yet another.
É neste contexto socioeconómico que se desenrola este conto situado num bairro de lata no Zimbabué, em que as pessoas sabem que um dia chegarão os buldózeres para arrasar com ele. Numa das barracas vive uma louca que aparece misteriosamente grávida e noutra, uma mulher que não consegue levar nenhuma gravidez até ao fim.
This was a disturbing read for many reasons - however the real focus of this story is the collection of dwellings (slums, township - there are no words that describe the scenery and yet Petina Gappah describes it so precisely it comes in to laser focus and in so doing becomes a character in its own right) in which you see a slice of the life of those who live there.
There are many scenes here that are uncomfortable to read - but not wanting to give away anything of the story I will refrain just that this sad tale although fiction feels just one step away from reality and that is a terrible reflection of what some peoples lives are reduced to.
This is one of those stories which is compelling reading as I will be the first to admit that I have no idea what such a life is like - from the life I was born in to I cannot imagine anything differently so to be shown this small slice of life however uncomfortable I feel that it needed to be told. So here we have another of the Faber stories revealed.
I occurred to me that I just bought all twenty of the Faber Stories series. I didn’t stop to pick one over another, or to exclude certain writers from certain countries. I bought them all knowing wherever they took me they would be good.
I had not heard of Petina Gappah and I would not have placed her name in central Africa, born in Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe. Two countries I visited many lifetimes and careers ago. An Elegy for Easterly was first published in 2009. For me it caught the spirit of those African countries.
The Queen of England is coming to visit Harare, and the government is clearing the townships to make the city look pristine. Gather up the people and put them in places she will not see. One of these places is Easterly. “And so the government hid away the poverty, the people put on plastic smiles and the City Council planted new flowers in the streets. Long after the memories of the Queen’s visit had faded, and the broken arms of the arrested women were healed, Easterly Farm took root.” Description of place is important in this story “Their mouths and lungs took in the smoke-soaked smell of Easterly: smoke from outside cooking, smoke wafting in through the trees from the roadside where the women roasted maize in the rainy season, smoke from burning grass three fields away, cigarette smoke.”
In Easterly we find Martha Mupengo, who lifts her skirts and asks for twenty cents. The children laugh at her nakedness, but they know that something is wrong. She is slow witted but also her belly is swelling. Marth moved into a house where Titus Zunguza had killed his woman and then himself. She had claimed the house by simply moving in. It was untouched.
Although Martha always asks for twenty cents, the children don’t know what cents are any more. A loaf of bread costs half a million dollars, so coins are obsolete. The kids can just remember the designs on the old coins. A baobab tree or the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. Someone’s father jokes with the kids, ‘Before the President was elected, the Zimbabwe Ruins were a prehistoric monument in Masvingo province. Now the Zimbabwe Ruins extend to the whole country.’ The kids look at him blankly and run off. He laughs and laughs at his own joke.
They have become a nation of traders, hawkers and road-side sellers. ‘One million for two, five million for six…’. The descriptions of cheerful poverty make this story real. Fake goods everywhere, ‘..the Gucchii bag and the Prader shoes, among the Louise Vilton bags, the boys of Mupedzanhamo competed to get the best customers.” The writing is alive with the names and the bright colours.
Josephant’s wife is the first adult to recognize Martha’s condition. Josephant is away working in the mines, and she has already lost three children to miscarriage and accuses her relatives of eating her lost children. Her situation drives her to a series of different churches, further and further afield, looking for some salvation. Several months ago, when Josephant came home looking for his wife, she was away at an all night prayer meeting. Her story has yet another twist of fate to come.
An Elegy for Easterly is such a fun short story. The characters are all quite interesting. I enjoyed the description of these improvised neighborhoods in Zimbabwe and the reflexions it instilled in me. The ending is very curious, a bit predictable as the title is itself a spoiler, and definitely heartbreaking.
Most of the Faber Stories are set it America, the UK, or Ireland (which corresponds perfectly with the fact that these countries are home to most of the authors). I picked up this one because it is set in Zimbabwe.
The synopsis tells us that the Queen is coming to Harare, and so everything unsightly must be swept under the rug. This includes an overabundance of citizens, who are relocated to a temporary town called Easterly Farm, which is quickly overrun by poverty. The story follows in particular one woman in Easterly who has "lost her wits and gained a pregnancy."
I found this an engaging and worthwhile story from start to finish, but was not surprised to discover that it is only a small piece from a larger collection: a set of short stories by Gappah published under the same title in 2009. This single story sticks closely to the pregnant woman- including those who help her and those her hurt her, and those who only want to gape and jeer. Though I did find her story interesting and complete in itself, it is only a snapshot of a larger picture that I found more intriguing than the vague background provided as setting info here. I think I might've benefitted more from reading the entire collection by Gappah rather than this one story alone, as it left me feeling as though something were missing.
"All the women who walk alone at night are prostitutes, the government said- lock them up, the Queen is coming."
3.5 stars. One of the shorter ones in the series (48 in print 23 on Kindle). This one revolves around a woman who's lost her mind but somehow is pregnant, in Zimbabwe, under Queen's role. Old lady is coming for a visit and Govt is busy cleaning up the slums to make the place look nice. Rest of the story is about the fate of these people and the poor woman. Nice intro to the author's brand of fiction.
I so rarely find a short story that I think is the right length. And this was too short. It's not a style or context I'm overly familiar with and I would've liked to spend a little more time settling into it before it was over. But I did really enjoy what was here.
A short story set in a shanty town in Zimbabwe. It is a brief look at the life of a mentally ill woman and her neighbours, before the shanty town is destroyed, how people try to live and love in such a situation.
the one that is based in zimbabwe, telling the stories of the people who are displaced by the government
this was FAR too short, but it was a gorgeous character study on some very interesting & well-developed characters for the 20 pages we spent with them! i particularly enjoyed the characterisation of martha- girl just needed a massive hug!! i also appreciated the balance of gory/ horrific imagery with humour
A story of precarious existence in a state failed by its own liberators. Achieved by allusion from characters who survive on their own metal. Death and birth. Building and destroying. A richly distilled story. Afterbirth could be the metaphor for a nation or a continent.
I'm a big fan of Petina Gappah's The Book of Memory so was eager to read this short story which was published before that novel. It looks at one of the shanty towns, Easterley, that was built up after the forcible removal of poor Zimbabweans from Harare, using the excuse of 'cleaning it up'. In just a few families, Petina Gappah shows the poverty, the anguish and anger that fills the residents lives and on the outskirts one woman Martha Mupengo who has lost her wits. Martha is pregnant and the outcome of the story when we learn of another woman's fertility struggles is obvious and sad. The story just didn't grab hold of me and it just didn't have the length to really engage despite highlighting an event that mainstream media probably swept under its carpet.
Incredible collection of short stories about Petina Gappah's homeland of Zimbabwe around independence in 1980 and the transitional years. It's really interesting how they all reference colonialism, its impact and psyche of those living through it in Zimbabwe. The stories are as pleasantly surrealist and bizarre as they are funny and profound.
Favourites are: 'At the Sound of the Last Post' 'The Annexe Shuffle' 'In the Heart of the Golden Triangle' 'Our Man in Geneva Wins a Million Euros' 'My Cousin-Sister Rambinai'
This was a 41-page story of a Zimbabwean community which is uprooted to clean up a township in advance of a visit from the Queen. The focus is mainly on a women who has "lost her wits and gained a pregnancy".
I enjoyed reading this, but felt that it suffered a little from being a short story. Gappah creates a vivid world, and there is so much in here that I would have liked to have seen expanded into a full text.
2.5 cos I hate short stories. I will read her other stuff, only modern african writer reminiscent of Heinemann African Writers 1970s stuff. But 1 depressing 2 short 3 I felt the motif of abuse "taking what you want from the weaker and leaving them for dead" didn't develop. Evocative. Will seek a novel set in africa by her.
It's well observed and a moderately interesting look at a slice of life in Zimbabwe. The story doesn't really stand on its own merits. As part of a wider collection, it might work but there's not enough substance to merit a single volume devoted to it.
Hasta ahora, mi relato favorito de la colección, sin duda alguna. Si queréis leer sobre abusos, pobreza, conflictos y prejuicios Africanos, concretamente Zimbabwe, este es vuestro cuento. Además, se lee súper rápido y es cortito.