Ruth Hartley's Blog: Storyteller, page 4

Freedom of Speech and truth-telling

The BBC Reith Lectures

I listened to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Reith Lecture on Freedom of Speech on the BBC and I knew I was once again in a world of curiosity and questioning where books are open doors to the whole world. As Adichie said, the essential freedom to be creative is only possible if there is freedom of speech. The Reith lectures were by four people on the subject of President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. I had felt lost and homeless after our travels in the Middle East ended. We had journeyed through changing landscapes, differing perceptions of life and many other ways of being human and telling truths. My longed-for home seemed to have become a closed and narrow trap. I didn’t feel that I belonged anywhere. Once again I was a citizen of nowhere and not a citizen of the world.

The Banshees of Inisherin

The Banshees of Inisherin was on at the local cinema the night after the Golden Globe event on TV. We decided to see it because Colin Farrell had won an award for his role in it. The film is set against the background noise of the guns of the Irish civil war. Innis Erin – Inisherin means the island of Ireland (Erin) and the lives of the few people on this tiny fabulous island who are apparently dull and boring, are as violent, passionate and dangerous as that of the warring mainland. I didn’t know what it was about but I hoped it would be good entertainment. In its favour, it was also a ‘Version originale’ rather than dubbed. (C’est à dire dans la langue dans laquelle il a été tourné.) That turned out to be just as well because Irish -spoken English is poorly translated into rather dubious French subtitles.It is a brilliant movie.

The Banshees of Inisherin

The Banshees of Inisherin was on at the local cinema the night after the Golden Globe event on TV. We decided to see it because Colin Farrell had won an award for his role in it. The film is set against the background noise of the guns of the Irish civil war. Innis Erin – Inisherin means the island of Ireland (Erin) and the lives of the few people on this tiny fabulous island who are apprently dull and boring, are as violent, passionate and dangerous as that of the warring mainland. I didn’t know what it was about but I hoped it would be good entertainment. In its favour, it was also a ‘Version originale’ rather than dubbed. (C’est à dire dans la langue dans laquelle il a été tourné.) That turned out to be just as well because Irish -spoken English is poorly translated into rather dubious French subtitles.It is a brilliant movie.

Egypt’s COP27 and Zambia’s Kariba Dam

Disembarking at Cairo, we were confronted with an enormous billboard welcoming delegates to the COP27 climate conference. 40 000 delegates were meeting to discuss, among other things, the painful question of financial responsibility for fixing the climate crisis caused largely by the activities of developed countries.

Visiting Egypt was a long-held dream. It was wonderful for many reasons, not least of which is our brilliant Egyptian guide Mohammed Ali who explains and inspires in equal measure. However, exploring the ancient rise and fall of the Pharaohs does not shield me from today’s concerns. Rather, it amplifies the question, “When will we learn from history?” Mohammed and I talked about the Aswan Dam and the changes it has made to Nile River agriculture just as the Kariba Dam has changed the Lower Zambezi Basin. We also talked about the displacement of the Nubian villagers and compared their plight with the Batonga of the Middle Zambezi

COP27 sign at Cairo International AirportKariba Dam: A giant unpredictable experiment

Considering the challenges of COP27, I was reminded of my early 2020 visit to Zambia for an interview about my first book, The Shaping of Water, published some years earlier. Although Zambia is a very different African country, there are familiar parallels.

In Learning from the Kariba Dam, an article published on 22 July 2020 in The Climate Issue of The New York Times Magazine, Namwall Serpell says, “The history of the Kariba Dam is the story of a war over the past and the future of a river.” Namwali Serpell is a Zambian who has written a prize-winning book about the Dam called The Old Drift

The Kariba Dam which created Lake Kariba was one of many engineering projects built by a colonial government to serve their own interests, at a huge cost to the local and downstream ecology and population, and a financial cost which continues now as the Kariba Dam Rehabilitation Project (KDRP) attempts to repair the 80-metre deep plunge hole endangering the dam.

What follows is a repost of my reflections on that visit and the “giant unpredictable experiment that is changing the natural environment of the region”, first published on 21 March 2020:

The Shaping of Water: Returning to the past to build the future Daniel Sikazwe interviews Ruth Hartley on the terrace of the Ridgeway Hotel

This year (2020), I time-travelled back more than 30 years. I returned to the Ridgeway Hotel in Lusaka to the place where golden weaver birds build their nests above small sun-worshipping crocodiles. Here, there were once an excellent Zintu craft shop, a regular Zambian ladies’ lunch, an Independence Day National Art Exhibition, and gin-and-tonics on the verandah under the management of Richard Chanter.

On this occasion, I was meeting Daniel Sikazwe, journalist, broadcaster and PEN member to interview me about my novel The Shaping of Water. The Ridgeway was as pleasant as ever! As with the Alliance Francaise event compèred for me by Daniel, it was a very enjoyable interview. Daniel asked penetrating questions about the reasons I wrote The Shaping of Water, and the truth of the facts in it.

“It’s a book that should be standard reading for Zambians,” Daniel said. “It tells of a part of our history that is not known about.” And so we talked of how I came to write this book and of the problems of writing cross-cultural history as a novel.

A nomad in the Middle East

Gone away travellingCOP27 advert that greeted us in Cairo airport

I intended to write two blogs to cover the time I was away travelling. I didn’t. Packing and organising were more essential before I left. One option was to repost older blog posts that had become relevant again to cover that period. I didn’t. There wasn’t even time for that. Readers, I apologise. You are always in my thoughts!

The Halley’s Comet Exhibition at Mpapa Gallery Zambia 1986

Rockets, comets and Deep Space researchhttp://Par NASA/W. Liller — NSSDC's Photo Gallery (NASA):http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/photogallery-comets.htmlhttp://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/comet/lspn_comet_halley1.jpg, Domaine public, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=544352

Ariane, is the rocket developed in France by the European Space Agency and first launched in 1979. I feel that I have a connection with it that goes back 36 years to 1986 when I was one of the directors of the Mpapa Gallery in Zambia. The Ariane rocket was named after Ariadne the woman abandoned by Theseus after she saved him from the Minotaur. As Ariane is a 3-stage rocket that is non-recoverable I suppose this is the reason for the choice of name.

This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga

Imprisoned minds in colonised bodieshttps://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cps...

Tsitsi Dangarembga and Julie Barnes were arrested on 31st July 2020 for walking down a street in Harare carrying placards that simply said “We want better. Reform our institutions.”. They were convicted on 29th September 2022 and given suspended sentences and fines for inciting violence. Dangarembga is a writer and filmmaker who has worked with her friend, Julie Barnes. Tsitsi Dangarembga and I were born in the same country, but grew up in different worlds where our bodies were colonised by a racist government that imprisoned our minds in opposing realities. Tsitsi Dangarembga helped to liberate me by writing her first book Nervous Conditions. I wept with relief when I read it. That was in 1988. I should have thanked her long ago.

The kindness of creative people to each other

My stand at this year’s book fair.Autour du Livre Saturday 17th September

It is crazy of me to go to this Book Fair because I write in English and it’s impossible to sell my books after all everyone else who visits and participates, reads, writes and buys French books. All the same I’ve been going for a number of years now – since 2017 when I had only written two books – The Shaping of Water and The Tin Heart Gold Mine. I think this may be my fifth time and, given the gap caused by the Covid lockdown, that represents a long commitment, both from me and those who organise it and who, over time, have been friendly and supportive of me.

Fly with me

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We have a wonderful red Chinese kite that we bought in Shanghai in 2007. It’s a giant squid that flies with beautiful ease, but needs both space and wind. Here in our village we have space, but not much wind. That’s changing with the climate. The wind we get now is gusty, dusty and inconstant. In Zambia I would see children flying homemade kites made from plastic bags as I drove through the squatter towns that circle Lusaka and there were always trapped kites fluttering on the power lines overhead. The kite-flying children were always laughing because flying kites is a magical and liberating experience and kites cost nothing to make. I wrote a short story about a broken-hearted woman and a pink kite dancing between pain and joy. It’s in my short story collection When We Were Wicked

The Godfrey Setti Retrospective Exhibition at Lechwe Trust Art Gallery: Art Lives on III

[image error]Godfrey Setti

In 1984 Godfrey Setti asked me if he could exhibit his paintings at Mpapa Gallery. I remember that occasion so well. Godfrey was a gentle and charming young 26-year-old and I had just begun work as manager and was finding out exactly what that entailed. We were both facing new experiences, though coincidentally we had each just completed Art Diplomas. Following my degree in Fine Art at Cape Town, in 1981 I had completed a Post-Graduate Art and Design Teachers Certificate at Middlesex University while Godfrey followed his teacher training with an Art Diploma from the Evelyn Hone in Lusaka. Our lives had been different. We were, however, both born in Africa and we were both passionate about art and would become friends over the next ten years.