Brunei: Written in Black

 

 

Written in Black

by K.H. Lim

 

 

 

Since there's not too much out there that's set in Brunei, so it's no wonder that my new blogger friend and I chose the same book for this tiny little country that is situated on the island of Borneo, surrounded by the South China Sea on one side and by Malaysia on all other sides.  Written in Black is about a small boy, Jonathan, who is adrift in the chaos of his family's dysfunction, left too often to his own devices as he struggles to understand why his mother has left, his eldest brother has run away, and his father has disengaged.  When his grandfather dies and the family gathers, Jonathan and his needs are only further pushed aside.  After learning that his cousin has been in touch with the elder brother, who in turn is in regular contact with their mother ... Jonathan decides to take matters into his own hands.  He hides in the back of the coffin delivery truck, and sets out to solve the problem of his missing family members.

 

What struck me most about this story was both how heartbreakingly alone Jonathan felt among the people who were supposed to love him best.  Desperately missing his mother and not understanding what happened to cause her to leave, he is devastated to learn she calls when he's not at home and that he is the only one who hasn't been able to talk to her.  As children often do, he internalizes this in a very personal way, and it was difficult to read his pain, which the author conveyed very clearly.

 

The novel was somewhat entertaining but not really worthy of high marks.  Jonathan's journey is billed as a coming of age tale, a label that fits in how the novel is structured ... more internal dialogue than action.  The fact that Jonathan is reading Huckleberry Finn as the story gets underway serves as a little foreshadowing.  Overall, I have to say I didn't get what I'd hoped for from the book ... no real insight about Brunei or even about Jonathan himself.  Another episode in the Few Books Set In Small Countries drama ...

 

 



Botswana: White Dog Fell from the Sky

 

White Dog Fell from the Sky

by Eleanor Morse

 

 

 

 



So I had a really rough day today.  I'm feeling overloaded at work and disorganized in how I'm working, which of course makes the overload worse.  I'm also feeling pulled in too many directions.  My kids are all young adults and fairly independent, but it's summer and they are around a lot ... and I want to see them and spend time with them ... but see my previous comment about overload.  It's hard to focus on one thing for any extended period of time, and as the day goes on, I can feel my stress ... and blood pressure ... creeping up and up.  On days like this, I am so grateful to escape into the world of books.  Not just the one that I'm reading, but the whole darn world of them.

I soothed myself this evening with a good hour surfing Goodreads and Amazon, thinking about what's coming up soon in my literary trip around the world.  I wrapped up with ordering three new books ... for Bulgaria, Cameroon, and Canada!  Oh, and I sent my very nice son David out to bring home ice cream for dinner.  Feeling much better now!

But let's get back to the line-up ... Botswana!  I read White Dog Fell from the Sky, by Eleanor Morse.  I can't recall where I picked this up, but it's been on my shelf for a while now, just waiting for Botswana to get to the top of the list.  When the time came, I picked it up, read ten pages, and put it back down.  In the opening scene, there was a coffin, a desperate man escaping from something, and a mysterious white dog that appeared out of nowhere and began to follow our protagonist everywhere he went.  I thought, at first, that White Dog was a spirit of some kind, and I didn't think I was going to like the story line.  Thank goodness I picked it back up because this was seriously an outstanding story, well written and engaging, and so compelling in how it addressed apartheid, isolation, and escape.  No spirits were involved.  Just genuine human beings, flawed and frantic to make the best life possible, crossing all kinds of border and boundaries in the name of friendship and decency.  The dog was just a plain old white dog ... symbolic perhaps of the unexplainable connection and loyalty that sometimes grows between two beings and becomes something we cannot imagine being without. 

In the middle of apartheid South Africa, a young black medical student, Isaac, flees for his life, crossing the border (in an empty coffin) into Botswana, where he knows only one person and has nothing but the clothes on his back.  His friend, Amen, also left South Africa to escape the racial violence that plagued the country.  Unlike Amen, who channeled his anger into joining a revolutionary organization, Isaac wanted only peace and the opportunity to make a living.  He meets Alice, a lonely American woman who came to Botswana because of her husband's job, and he becomes her gardener despite not knowing the first thing about growing plants and flowers.  While trying to create a space of beauty and serenity outside of Alice's home, Isaac is in tune with what is happening inside the home ... namely that there is discord and unhappiness and the two rarely both spend the same night in the house.  Both Isaac and Alice are trying to identify and understand themselves during a time when nothing around them makes sense.  Dealing with painful things, like exile or marital strife, are made so much worse by the loss of everything familiar and known.

 

When Alice sets off on a business trip into Botswana's countryside, she leaves Isaac in charge of the house.  When she returns, she find the house empty, Isaac missing, and White Dog alone and starving.  During the few weeks Alice was gone, she had experienced a whirlwind romance and dashed hopes when tragedy struck unexpectedly.  Stinging from her own loss, she nonetheless endeavors to find out what happened to Isaac, who meanwhile, has found himself dealing with the aftermath of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

This is a brilliant novel about immigration, identity, second chances, and compassion.  It's about the human response to great love, great disappointment, and great turmoil.  I'm so glad I didn't give up on this one!

Next up for the blog is Brunei.  You may wonder about what happened to Brazil!  Well, back in 2016, when I was going out of order for a while, I read Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon, set in Brazil.  It was an okay story, but I didn't love the book so I thought about trying another book set in Brazil and picked up Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey.  Totally not my cup of tea ... so in the spirit of "so many books, so little time," I ditched it, gave myself credit for Brazil, and am moving on to the tiny country of Brunei. 



Bolivia: When Invisible Children Sing

When Invisible Children Sing

by Chi Cheng Huang

When I lived in the City of Falls Church in Virginia, the small town holiday parades always featured Bolivian dancers and musicians that filled the air with the festive sound of stomping feet, clapping hands, bells, whistles, and blaring folk music.  You couldn’t help but wish you could join the celebration.   It was a fine example of our immigrant neighbors bringing one element of their rich culture to their new home in the United States, offering it up to share with anyone who was interested and the least bit curious.  It also fueled my continued interest in Bolivia, which began back in 2003 when I first joined the Foreign Service and listed Bolivia’s capital, LaPaz, and my top choice of places I hoped to be assigned as a first-tour officer.  We ended up going to the Dominican Republic, which we loved, but I’ve remained interested in South America’s mountainous, land-locked Bolivia.  I hope I can visit someday.

Until then, I will settle for armchair travel, as I’ll have to do with many countries.  Once again, I struggled to find a book set in Bolivia.  I was just about to settle on A Matter of Desire, by Edmundo Paz Soldan, when a friend of a friend recommended When Invisible Children Sing, by Chi Cheng Huang.  Although I usually prefer fiction, I decided to read Huang’s memoir because I found the subject matter so compelling.  Huang was in the middle of his residency after medical school at Harvard University when he decided to take a one-year sabbatical to dedicate his time to serving others.  After considering a few options, he chose to travel to Bolivia, where he would work with street children.  Huang is pretty naïve when he sets out on this journey of goodwill.  He doesn’t know anything about Bolivia … or about street children … but he feels called to make a meaningful contribution, so he puts his faith in God and the people who helped him to arrange this situation, boards a plane, and finds himself immersed in a new culture and way of life. 

At first, he spends most of his time at an orphanage, working among Bolivians who have dedicated their lives to taking care of children in need, but he soon finds himself frustrated by the rules and limitations imposed on his efforts.  He begins to spend more and more time in the streets, often at night and usually at great risk to his own safety, looking for the children and seeking to understand the unique culture of homelessness and destitution that exists in this microcosm of Bolivian society.  All around him, he witnesses exploitation, abuse, and desperation.  But he also finds love, community, kindness, and hope. 

Huang walks us through his experience by telling us a series of stories about the children.  They do not all have happy endings, and he does not make it nice and pretty for his readers.  It is bold and honest and real.  There is an undercurrent of Huang’s Christian faith running through the narrative, but it is very subtle:  present, but not overpowering; central, but not primary.  He acknowledges that he feels called to be there and is motivated by his faith to sacrifice his comfortable life in order to serve the children, but he is acutely aware that it is through his hands, feet, and heart that the work will need to be done.  Day by day, child by child, Huang not only tends to the children’s injuries and illnesses, but also to their hearts and minds.  He earns their trust by not swooping in to insist they change, no matter how much he wishes for their lives to improve, and he allows himself to become part of their lives and community instead of immediately pulling them into his.  In short, he accepts them as they are, for who they are, and without judgment, and it is because of this that he is eventually able to inspire some of the children to come live in the safety of the orphanage, where they are fed, clothed, educated, and able to plan for some kind of future that does not include the streets. 

Throughout the story of the streets, Huang weaves his personal journey through his own childhood.  The son of Taiwanese immigrants to the United States, he grows up in safety and comfort but is aware that not everyone enjoys these things.  He is also aware that these things do not protect you from tragedy or pain, and he folds his readers gently into his story of loss through his young sister’s death and its impact on his life. 

The first time I encountered street children was in 1999, when my husband and I traveled to Vietnam to adopt our daughter.  Their presence on every corner was shocking to my inexperienced sensibilities, and I did not understand why no one did anything to help them.  I later read A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry, a novel set in India that takes readers behind the scenes of the reasons children may be living on the streets and the adults who exploit them and manipulate the feelings of others in order to earn money through sympathy.  There were also plenty of children on the corners in the Dominican Republic.  Here in the United States, we may not find them on the streets, but children do live in deplorable conditions, far outside the standards of what we would consider to be appropriate care of our most vulnerable citizens. 

 

 

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what can be done to make a difference in the lives of children not fortunate enough to have loving parents and stable homes, and in my own way, I’ve tried to have an impact through personal decisions about how I live my life, where I donate my money, how I spend my volunteer hours.  It’s not enough … it will never be enough until every single child is safe and loved.  Huang realizes this, too, as the memoir draws to a close and a child to whom he has become attached decides to stay on the street with her mother instead of living in safety and comfort away from all she has known.  He doesn’t give up though on trying to change what he can.  Although he returns to the United States and to his career as a physician, he continues to visit Bolivia’s children and eventually finances the construction of several homes where the children can find safety and comfort with their loved ones, without having to give up all that they know.  What an incredible lesson for all of us.