GEORGIA

READ

Georgia is one of the countries making up the Caucasus, a region nestled between Asia and Europe. It was once part of the Soviet Union, and Sacred Darkness, by Levan Berdzenishvili, is a portrayal of life as a political prisoner in the Soviet gulag.

Having read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s grim chronicle, The Gulag Archipelago, many years ago, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read another book about the gulag. But Sacred Darkness was different. For starters, it’s fiction, even though it’s based on the author’s real-life experiences as a political prisoner in a Soviet prison camp. As a work of fiction, it’s very entertaining, although the description on the book’s cover is something of an overstatement: “The only book on the Soviet gulags that’s impossible to read without laughing.”

Each chapter is about a different inhabitant of the camp. There’s a mentally-challenged young man who relives all of his late brother’s war heroics as if they were his own. There’s a prisoner who’s obsessed with calculations and numbers, and another who’s a philologist, always ready to debate the fine points of the various Caucasian alphabets. Political prisoners in the camp include an electrician, taxi driver, movie projectionist, inventor, former military officer, psychologist, and members of many other professions. My favorite chapter is about Butov, a theoretical physicist who was arrested for maintaining an underground library of anti-Soviet literature. When the authorities finally found the library, they burned everything in it in a fire that lasted a week. Unbeknownst to them, Butov had microfilmed most of the collection, so the vast majority of the library's materials survived, even though the hard copies were destroyed.

Interwoven with the characters’ individual stories are details of life in the camp. The work the prisoners are expected to do is to sew heavy-duty work mitts. When their work is done, they pass the time by playing games, reading the books that make it past the censor, and having Socratic debates about any number of topics, with one prisoner or another playing the role of Socrates. Their food supplies are meager, and they drink as much tea and smoke as many cigarettes as their finances allow. The narrator also introduces the reader to the cats who live in the camp: “… the very old cat Vasika, the fine young cat Gipsy, and the sweet gentle Ada.”

Although there is much in this book that fits in with our expectations of what one might find in prison literature, such as conflicts with prison officials and arguments between prisoners of different nationalities, the fact that the inmates are political prisoners gives the book a whole different feeling. In this prison, no one is worried about getting shanked by another inmate. Everyone is there for crimes of political activism against the Soviet Union, not acts of violence.

What surprised me was that the leader of the Soviet Union during the period covered by this book was Mikhail Gorbachev, and the real-life people on whom the characters are based were imprisoned during the era of glasnost and perestroika. Knowing that the Soviet Union fell under Gorbachev’s leadership, I was not expecting to read that so much political repression was still taking place while he was president.

I enjoyed Sacred Darkness much more than I expected to, and I’m glad that the author has gone on to have a fulfilling life after his experiences in the gulag.

COOK

During one of the Socratic debates that occurred between prisoners in Sacred Darkness, the topic discussed was food. The narrator played the role of Socrates, and another prisoner took on the character of Anaxogoras, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. After a lengthy debate about the fine points of various international culinary specialties, the narrator, as Socrates, forced an admission from the prisoner playing Anaxogoras that a Georgian dish called satsivi was the best dish in the world. How, then, could I not choose satsivi to make for this blog post?

The problem is that satsivi is made with turkey. Fortunately, I was able to find a recipe on the “Georgian Journal” website for a vegan version that uses mushrooms in place of the turkey. With this recipe, I encountered a new problem: where on earth to find the spice blend the recipe called for. It’s called khmeli suneli, and my local spice shop didn’t have it. I drove to an international market in a nearby city, and searched spice jars and packets in languages I can’t read until I finally found what I was looking for. This packet of khmeli suneli (or, as the packet says in fine print on the back, hmeli-suneli) is a blend of salt, coriander seeds, fenugreek, sweet paprika, basil, bay leaf, red hot pepper, turmeric, mint, and marjoram.

The satsivi was pretty good, served over a bed of white rice. I was a little underwhelmed with my first bite, so I sprinkled on a little salt and that made a big difference. After all the trouble I went to in searching for the khmeli suneli, I was shocked to realize that the recipe called for only a third of a teaspoon, so the flavor was virtually imperceptible when added to four cups of mushrooms. At this rate, I’ll have to make this dish many more times in order to use up the whole packet of khmeli suneli! If you decide to try out this recipe, be generous with the pomegranate seed garnish, which gives the dish a nice little zing.

GIVE

GlobalGiving.com listed three projects in Georgia. All seemed worthy, so I chose the one that had received the fewest donations, an effort to raise funds to buy an adapted minivan to transport children with disabilities to a daycare center in order to provide them with “a personal development plan and consultations with psychologists, doctors and occupational therapists.”

According to the project description, “Families living in rural areas of Georgia have limited access to public transportation services. In addition, available buses, largely from the Soviet period, are not safe or adapted for people in wheelchairs. In order to provide our services, the organization currently pays for the private transportation of children with disabilities. The cost of this service is very expensive and does not provide the safest method of transportation, as the private cars [they currently use] are also not adapted for wheelchairs.”

More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/van-for-transporting-children-with-disabilities/.

NEXT STOP: GERMANY

THE GAMBIA

READ

Dayo Forster’s Reading the Ceiling opens with a young woman named Ayodele lying in bed on her eighteenth birthday and deciding that this is the day she will lose her virginity. Having been warned by her mother for years that men only want one thing, Ayodele thinks, “I want to get this sex thing over and done with so my life can move on.” She doesn’t have a boyfriend, so the question becomes who she will find to do the deed with. She thinks about her choices – Reuben, a guy who likes her but whom she doesn’t particularly fancy; Yuan, a classmate that she likes, and who likes her, but their relationship hasn’t yet taken on a romantic aspect; Frederick, the father of one of her friends, who seems like he’d be willing; and Osman, her mother’s servant, as a last resort.

Ayodele goes to a party at a disco that night, and she does indeed lose her virginity. The next third of the book tells the story of her life after that incident. But just when I started wondering how there could possibly be enough left to say to carry the plot through the remaining two-thirds of the book, the author shifts the narrative. She starts over again, telling the story from the perspective of Ayodele’s life if she had lost her virginity to one of the other men. That fills the next third of the book, and then she begins again, offering yet another scenario in the last third of the book. It’s kind of a choose-your-own-adventure book, built on Ayodele’s decision to lose her virginity when she turned eighteen.

I found it interesting that, regardless of which scenario was in play, the one constant was that Ayodele was successful in whatever work she ended up doing. Her circumstances may have changed from story to story, but she was strong and generally able to call the shots, no matter what life threw at her. Her relationship with her no-nonsense mother was a key factor throughout the book. Ayodele grew up in a female-only household, her father having deserted her mother many years earlier. He came back for a short time, but then died. In addition to Ayodele and her mother, Ayodele’s younger twin sisters also live in the home. The book is filled with strong women, and those relationships offset, or even eclipse, the relationships Ayodele has with men in each of the different scenarios.

Near the end of Reading the Ceiling, Ayodele thinks back to a story that her mother’s friend, Aunt K, used to tell her and her sisters. It’s about a mermaid who has to make a decision about where to live, but she procrastinates and the decision is taken out of her hands. She gets caught in a fisherman’s net, and then the fisherman and the mermaid both have to make choices. According to Ayodele, “The story did not always end the same way.” Likewise, the author gives the reader three different endings about Ayodele’s life following her eighteenth birthday. I found it gratifying that in each scenario, Ayodele took responsibility for her actions and never let life keep her down for very long.

COOK

A dish that’s mentioned several times in Reading the Ceiling is benachin, a word that means “one pot.” It’s a vegetable and rice dish that usually contains meat or fish, and in the book, it seemed to be a staple of family gatherings. I found a recipe for a vegetarian version on the “Around the world in 80 vegetarian recipes” blog. For the Maggi cube, I substituted a vegetable bouillon cube. This was a healthy and hearty dish. If I had it to do over again, I'd cook the vegetables and rice (separately) a little longer.

GIVE

I found only one project listed for The Gambia on the GlobalGiving.com website, but it sounded like a good one, helping street children in Basori Village. The plan is “to re-integrate fifty (50) street children in to homes, prevent those at risk of entering the street, provide them with health care, reliable and relevant education, and enhance their participation in community and national development.” The project is expected to go from September 2018 to August 2023. More information is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/basori-village-gambia-west-africa-children-empo/.

NEXT STOP: GEORGIA

GABON

READ

As you might expect from the title, Angèle Rawiri’s The Fury and Cries of Women deals with the adversities women face in a male-dominated society. In the case of the novel’s protagonist, Emilienne, the frustration comes from being unable to bear children for her husband Joseph, other than one daughter that was born to them early in their marriage. At least in part because of this situation, Joseph has taken a mistress, spending more nights with her than with his wife. Emilienne, then, is left with her mother-in-law who hates her and her husband’s two young nephews, who live in the house with them.

Multiple miscarriages and her husband’s infidelity have taken a toll on Emilienne. In the fictional city of Kampana, Emilienne has a very good job, making more money than her husband, and they live in an expensive house provided by her company. But none of that appears to matter in a country where women are prized for their ability to bear children. Emilienne is reminded of an observation from an article she read in a women’s magazine:

               “A woman is never completely satisfied. Whereas some enjoy professional

               success, other build a solid marriage based on love, and then there are those

               who have children to feel fulfilled. No woman, however, manages to enjoy

               all three.”

Having it all is apparently as much of a challenge for women in Gabon as it is for women in the United States.

Emilienne’s professional success is small comfort to her as she is assailed on all sides by people who blame her for what they see as her fertility problem. Even her mother seems to think that it wouldn’t be wrong for Joseph to take a mistress if Emilienne can’t give him children.

The plot takes many twists and turns, including murder, machinations against Emilienne by Joseph’s mother and his mistress, and a brief period during which Emilienne enters into a lesbian relationship. She explores different options for fertility treatments, from conventional medical consultation to hypnotism to sorcery. Her own feelings about herself run the gamut throughout the book too, as she is self-confident at some times, but self-loathing at others.

The book’s author, Angèle Rawiri, was Gabon’s first woman novelist, and she paved the way for the women writers in Gabon who came after her. The Fury and Cries of Women, which was published in 1989, was considered to be a feminist novel, with both the praise and the baggage that word evokes. A lengthy afterword by author Cheryl Toman goes into depth concerning Rawiri’s influence on women writers throughout Africa.

In the end, Emilienne is bent but not broken by the experiences she endures. She may not ever enjoy all three types of success discussed in the women’s magazine article, but she finally takes control of her own destiny.

COOK

Gabon is a former French colony, so most of the food mentioned in The Fury and Cries of Women is food we associate with France -- croissants, French cheeses, fancy meat and fish dishes. But there are also mentions of various fruits and vegetables, with bananas making an appearance in the novel more than once. So it was no surprise to find several baked banana recipes when I searched Gabonese cuisine online. The one I chose was from a website called International Cuisine, and the dish was called akwadu. It was simple to make, and easy to veganize by substituting Earth Balance for the butter and agave nectar for the honey. This dish was good served hot, but the leftovers were also good cold. I thought there was too much liquid for the number of bananas called for in the recipe, so if I were to make it again, I’d probably add in an extra banana or two.

GIVE

There were no projects for Gabon on the GlobalGiving.com website, so I searched the Internet to see what I could find. I discovered that the Nature Conservancy is working to preserve the health of Gabon’s rivers, which could be in jeopardy due to government efforts to create more hydropower plants. These plants may require more water than can safely be taken from the rivers, so the Nature Conservancy is working to gather accurate data about water flows.  By installing river gauge stations, the Nature Conservancy hopes to provide Gabonese authorities with the sound science they need to sustainably develop their natural resources. More information about this project is available at https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/africa/stories-in-africa/bringing-gabon-s-rivers-into-the-21st-century/.

NEXT STOP: THE GAMBIA

FRANCE

READ

The book I read for France, The Heart, by Maylis de Kerangal, left me emotionally drained. It chronicles the twenty-four hours following an automobile accident that leaves a young man brain dead, as doctors race through the steps required to remove his organs and transplant them into the bodies of people who will die without them.

Simon Limbres is nineteen years old, out before dawn to go surfing with two friends. They head for home afterwards, exhausted, in a truck that has only two seatbelts, leaving Simon unsecured. An accident occurs, propelling Simon through the windshield, and he is declared brain dead shortly after he is admitted to the hospital. His internal organs, however, survive intact.

What happens next is a carefully orchestrated procedure that begins with the delicate task of asking Simon’s parents, Sean and Marianne, for permission to remove the organs from their son, who is still warm and breathing, whose heart is still beating. “They’d barely had time to realize their tragedy before they had to decide about organ removal.” The man tasked with having this discussion with them, Thomas Rémige from the Coordinating Committee for Organ and Tissue Removal, understands perfectly the tightrope he must walk. “And here is this young man in a white coat, cautious but committed, determined not to jump the gun, but highly aware of the silent countdown in a corner of his mind, knowing all too well that a body in a state of brain death quickly deteriorates, that time is of the essence – and torn between these two imperatives.”

The book then goes into painstaking detail about the steps that follow the grant of permission for organ removal: searching the database of people needing organs to find those most compatible with Simon’s blood type and tissue characteristics; notifying hospitals treating those potential recipients that organs are available (a liver, two lungs, two kidneys, and a heart – Simon’s mother has refused to let them take her son’s eyes); the sending of surgeons from each of those hospitals to remove and take back the organs they need; the restoration of Simon’s body after the organs have been removed; and the transplanting of the organs into the recipients. In particular, we are introduced to Claire Méjan, the fifty-one-year-old woman who receive Simon’s heart. Of Claire, it is written that “… it disturbs her, the thought of waiting for someone to die so she can have their heart.”

The author is almost clinical in the way she describes the medical procedures involved, but her prose when writing about the people affected is beautiful, even poetic. I was able to read parts of the book with a certain amount of emotional detachment, but in other parts, I would find myself sobbing.

The Heart, with its tragic subject matter, is not the type of book I would normally choose. It’s an extraordinary novel, however, and I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to read it.

COOK

As you might imagine, food wasn’t a big factor in The Heart. That didn’t matter, since I had already decided on the French dish I wanted to make before I even started reading the book. In my pre-vegan days, I used to love cassoulet, a dish made with beans and various types of meat. On the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) website, I was excited to find three different recipes for vegan cassoulet, which I didn’t even know was a possibility. The process for making vegan cassoulet was almost as time consuming, and dirtied just as many dishes, as the process for the regular version. I wish I could say it was worth the effort. Don’t get me wrong – it was tasty enough. But in the end, it was basically just beans and veggies. Oh, well…

GIVE

After reading The Heart, I was determined to find a French organization involved in organ donation outreach to be the recipient of my donation. That was easier said than done. Actually, I found an organization, France ADOT (Fédération des Associations pour le Don d’Organes et des Tissus humains), right away, but since their website is in French, I couldn’t figure out exactly what they do. Fortunately, I found an article in English about an ad campaign they did, which explained that France ADOT is “a federation of associations that work throughout France to inform and raise awareness on organ, tissue and bone marrow donation.”

The ad campaign itself was for the purpose of encouraging the use of organ donor cards. This brought to mind a passage from The Heart, where Thomas Rémige wants to know if Simon would have consented to the removal of his organs, and his mother asks, “How can we know?” Encouraging people to carry organ donor cards alleviates the need for their loved ones to guess what their answer might have been to this painful question.

In case you’re fluent in French, more information about France ADOT is available on their website at https://www.france-adot.org/.

NEXT STOP: GABON

FINLAND

READ

I finished reading The Year of the Hare, by Arto Paasilinna, yesterday, and I’m still trying to process what I read. What began as a delightful story about a man rescuing an injured hare turned into something progressively more bizarre and considerably less delightful.

Vatanen, a journalist for a magazine, is on assignment with a photographer. The photographer is driving when the car suddenly hits a young hare in the middle of the road. They stop the car, and Vatanen runs into the forest looking for the injured hare. He finds it and improvises a splint for its broken leg. The photographer waits quite awhile for Vatanen to come back, and when he doesn’t return, the photographer leaves without him. Left alone with the hare, Vatanen comes to the realization that he really doesn’t like his wife and isn’t particularly fond of his job. He decides to leave everything behind and travel the country with the hare.

Vatanen and the hare go from town to town, where Vatanen picks up odd jobs and they meet an array of colorful characters. There’s a retired police superintendent who believes the country’s president has been replaced by an impostor, a rector who’s distressed to find a hare romping around in his church, a ski instructor who performs animal sacrifices, and a woman who insists she and Vatanen are engaged.

Through all his experiences, Vatanen’s devotion to the hare remains constant, even though there are a few times when he takes a curiously hands-off approach to ordeals the hare is facing. He must remain ever vigilant, as it seems there is always someone trying to separate him from the hare for one reason or another.

As I read about the increasingly implausible situations in which Vatanen found himself, it was hard to avoid the realization that The Year of the Hare is a satirical look at the way we live our lives. As Pico Iyer says in the book’s foreword:

               “All society is something of a burning house in Passilinna’s vision, and the very notion

               that you are ‘master of your destiny’ is something of a laughable illusion. Life is a matter

               of seeing what you can do to fix things and of savoring with glee the moments when you

               can’t do anything at all. The structures we occupy, which often seem so important, sit

               very thinly and tenuously on the ground in this book, and in a moment a job, a house,

               a life can be gone forever.”

COOK

Scenes involving eating and drinking were plentiful in The Year of the Hare, but with the exception of rye bread and hot potatoes, the characters seemed to eat nothing but animal products. I took to the Internet to see what Finnish vegan dishes I could find, and I came across a really good one – pannukakku, which is a baked Finnish pancake. I found a recipe for a vegan version of this delectable dish in the “How to Philosophize with Cake” blog. The pancake, which looks like cake on the outside, has a custard-like consistency on the inside. The recipe includes instructions on how to make a blueberry compote to serve over the pancake, but I decided to go with lingonberry compote instead. I mixed a ten-ounce jar of lingonberries with a tablespoon of soaked chia seeds, a tablespoon of maple syrup, and a tablespoon of water, then warmed it up in a saucepan. It was delicious with the pancake, but honestly, I think the warmed-up lingonberries would have been a perfectly fine topping on their own. At any rate, I loved this dish!

GIVE

Since one of the main characters in The Year of the Hare is, of course, the hare, I decided it would be appropriate to make my donation to an animal welfare organization. I searched online and found SEY (Suomen Eläinsuojelu), which claims to be “the biggest and most influential animal welfare group and animal protection expert in Finland.” SEY, “the Finnish Federation for Animal Welfare Associations, acts and operates to promote the welfare of and respect for all animals.” The organization’s advocacy efforts are not only for pets, but for wild animals (such as the hare!) as well. More information about SEY can be found at https://www.sey.fi/en/.

NEXT STOP: FRANCE

FIJI

READ

Moving Through the Streets, by Joseph C. Veramu, is a cautionary tale. It follows the lives of several young people who live in desperate poverty in an area just outside of Suva, Fiji’s capital.

These young people have largely lost any hope of moving up in the world, or even having any sort of decent, stable life. Born into poverty, they have watched their parents struggle to get by, and they don’t see any way out for themselves, at least through any means sanctioned by society. Most of them dropped out of school at a young age and have turned to petty crime as a way to support themselves.

Sakaraia recently got out of prison, where he served a hard nine-month sentence for a mugging. He has no job or family support, and no idea how to make his life better. He meets Merenia at a night club, and they decide to start living together. Merenia, who was orphaned in high school, makes her living as a prostitute.

A central figure in Sakaraia’s life is a gang leader named Onisi, who was the mastermind behind the crime that landed Sakaraia in prison. A small-time criminal and back-street abortionist who has also spent time in prison, Onisi develops a drug habit that makes him even more dangerous.

The author of the book, Joseph C. Veramu, has written books about child-rearing, education, and child development. This novel appears to be a way for him to explain to young people that the choices they make have a lasting impact on their future. It’s also a way for him to convey to society at large the dangers of allowing hopelessness and desperation to flourish. While not great literature, Moving Through the Streets delivers an important message.

COOK

Most of the characters in Moving Through the Streets are just scraping by, so I didn’t find many references to food that I would want to prepare for this blog post. I suppose the most interesting dish mentioned in the book was topoi, which is essentially a coconut dumpling.

When I looked for Fijian recipes online, I found numerous mentions of coconut bread, which sounded wonderful. The recipe I chose was from the “Hungary Buddha Eats the World” website. The only change I had to make to veganize the recipe was to use a vegan egg substitute in place of the eggs. The bread was delicious!

GIVE

If life is hard for poor young men in Fiji, it’s even worse for poor young women. When I read the following passage in Moving Through the Streets, I knew I wanted to donate to an organization helping victims of domestic violence:

               “[Merenia] knew that eventually she would be married to a labourer and would bear

               children in rapid succession. She would of course be beaten periodically, for the man

               to prove to himself that he was head of the family.”

On the GlobalGiving.org website, I found an organization that is working to educate judges and advocates in order to help women and girls in the Pacific obtain justice in the legal system. According to the project description, more than 60 percent of women and girls in the Pacific face violence in their lifetimes, yet “sentences are reduced in over 52% of GBV [gender-based violence] cases in the Pacific region because of gender stereotypes and cultural norms.”

The way this project is addressing this issue is “to change the attitudes and behaviors of judges and prosecutors through evidence (data collection and analysis) and train them to recognize how gender stereotypes and cultural norms contribute to low levels of sentencing, thereby denying access to justice for victims/ survivors by perpetuating the cycle of violence.”

More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/access-to-justice-for-women-and-girls/. 

NEXT STOP: FINLAND