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

ETHIOPIA

READ

One of my goals when I started this project was to learn something about different countries through their literature. In some cases, this hasn’t been possible, as the only books translated into English by authors in certain countries aren’t necessarily about those countries. For example, the only English translation of a novel by an Andorran author that I’m aware of is set in ancient Egypt.

The book I chose to read for Ethiopia, however, taught me a great deal about a sad era in that country’s history. Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, by Maaza Mengiste, takes place in the mid-1970s, and the legendary Emperor, Haile Selassie, is about to be deposed. He has enjoyed an almost god-like status in Ethiopia for decades, not only because of his claim to be a descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, but because of his stature in the international community.

At the beginning of this book, though, many in Ethiopia have begun to turn on him, and a famine that has killed tens of thousands of people in the northeastern part of the country appears to be the tipping point that will lead to the end of his regime. The author tells the story through the experiences of an upper-middle class family in the capital city of Addis Ababa. The father, Hailu, is a respected doctor at Prince Mekonnen Hospital, where his wife Selam, the soul of the family, is dying of congestive heart failure. They have two adult sons, Yonas, who is married and has a young daughter, and Dawit, a law student who is involved in anti-government protests. Dawit’s childhood friend Mickey, who comes from a poor family, has joined the military because he has no other prospects. This will cause tension between him and Dawit when a group of military officers, collectively known as the Derg, assassinates the Emperor, his family, and officials from his administration, and takes control of the government.

The Derg embraces communism, and their takeover of the country brings drastic changes to the lives of Hailu and his family. They are forced to give up part of their housing to a man who will ensure that they and their neighbors follow the new way of doing things, and they live in fear of being denounced if they don’t obey all the directives of the new regime. Dawit becomes increasingly involved in anti-government activities, adding further intensity to the family's worries. The author does a superb job of making the reader feel the terror and anger that the characters are experiencing.

Moments of joy are very few and extremely far between in Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, but it held my interest and educated me to the horrors of that dark period in Ethiopia’s history. The author has a new book, The Shadow King, coming out this fall, and I’ll be sure to read that book too.

COOK

As most vegans probably know, Ethiopian cuisine is very vegan-friendly. So even though there were no particular dishes mentioned in Beneath the Lion’s Gaze that I wanted to make for this blog post, I had no trouble finding an abundance of recipes online for vegan or veganizable dishes.

The dish I decided to make was ingudai tibs, using a recipe from veggiebelly.com. This simple dish is basically a mushroom stir-fry mixed with tomatoes, onions, and bell pepper, and seasoned with an Ethiopian berbere spice mix. Ideally, it would be served with a spongy, fermented flatbread called injera, but I was afraid that trying to make injera would be outside the bounds of my culinary capabilities, so I just served the tibs over rice. Perfection!

GIVE

There are so many worthy Ethiopian projects listed on the GlobalGiving website that I had a terrible time choosing just one. After reading several project descriptions, the one that touched my heart the most was Retrak, which helps Ethiopian street children by providing them with “food, medicine, shelter, education and everything they need to build a new life away from the street.” Beyond taking care of their immediate needs, Retrak works to figure out how these children became homeless in the first place and helps to restore them to a safe family environment. More information about Retrak is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/reaching-out-to-street-children-in-ethiopia/.

NEXT STOP: FIJI

ESWATINI

Eswatini? Where on earth is that? Well, I’m so glad you asked! Eswatini is a country in the southern part of Africa, and until last year, it was called Swaziland. However, on April 19, 2018, in honor of the country’s fiftieth anniversary of its independence from the United Kingdom, King Mswati III changed its name from Swaziland, which has colonial connotations, to Eswatini.

READ

I actually read two books for Eswatini. When I first started looking for books to read for this blog, I was aware of only one author from that country whose works had been published in English – Sarah Mkhonza. Her memoir, Weeding the Flowerbeds, was the book Ann Morgan, who was the inspiration for this project, had chosen to read for her blog, “A Year of Reading the World.” I’m trying to read novels, to the extent possible, so I was happy to discover that Mkhonza had also written a young adult novel titled Pains of a Maid. It tells the story of a young black woman named Thembani who falls in love with the son of the wealthy white couple on whose farm she works. The story was set in apartheid-era South Africa at a time when the Immorality Act forbade sexual relations between people of different races.

Judging from all the four- and five-star reviews Pains of a Maid has received on Goodreads, I am clearly not the target audience for this book. I found it to be simplistic, and the way the plot progressed was pretty far-fetched. So after I finished reading it, I went online to see if I could find any other novel written by an author from Eswatini. I hit the jackpot.

If there’s one type of book I love to read, it’s a good mystery, and that’s what I found when I discovered the Detective Emmanuel Cooper series by Malla Nunn. I decided to read the first book in the series, A Beautiful Place to Die, which is also set in apartheid-era South Africa.

Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is sent from Johannesburg to investigate the murder of a white police captain, who was shot once in the head and once in the spine, then his body was dragged into the river separating South Africa from Mozambique. Cooper has to deal with anger and belligerence from the dead captain’s sons, fear and distrust from the community’s black and mixed-race residents, and a power grab by the National Party’s Security Branch, who is determined to make the murder appear to have been orchestrated by communists. “The Security Branch and the National Party machine wanted a respected white policeman struck down in the line of duty. They didn’t want complications to that story. Under the new race laws, everything was black or white. Gray had ceased to exist.”

The truth of the matter is not so clear-cut, however. Cooper discovers that the dead captain had many secrets he kept carefully hidden from his Afrikaner wife and sons, secrets that may have been the motive for his murder. Cooper has secrets of his own and carries scars, both physical and emotional, from past events in his life. The investigation into the captain’s death will test Cooper in ways that he hasn’t had to face before.

I’m happy to have discovered this series, and I’m looking forward to reading more from this author.

COOK

Since the plots for both of the books I read took place in South Africa, I didn’t find any food ideas for this blog post. I looked online, and found a dish called samp, which is a type of hominy. I adapted a recipe from the website of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Madison, Wisconsin. Their recipe used metric measurements, and a couple of ingredients that I don’t have here – samp, which is different from the canned hominy I’m used to, and sugar beans, which I assume are grown in Africa. I substituted canned hominy for the samp, and black-eyed peas for the sugar beans, and made a very tasty dish.  Here is the recipe I ended up with:

Ingredients

7 cups water

1 25-oz. can of hominy, drained

1 cup dried black-eyed peas

1 onion, coarsely chopped

1 tomato, coarsely chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 cups green beans, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces

2 small potatoes, peeled and chopped

2 cups shredded cabbage

1 butternut squash, chopped

2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

Directions

Soak black-eyed peas overnight in water to cover.

Rinse black-eyed peas and put them in a large pot with the seven cups of water and one teaspoon of the salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for an hour and fifteen minutes.

Put the onion and tomato in a blender with a little water and purée them. Pour the mixture into the pot with the black-eyed peas, then add the hominy, carrots, potatoes, butternut squash, the remaining teaspoon of salt, and pepper. Simmer for twenty minutes, then add the green beans and shredded cabbage. Simmer for another twenty minutes. Serve hot.

GIVE

The GlobalGiving.org website listed several projects for Swaziland. I read through them and decided the one to which I wanted to donate was one offering preschool to orphans and other vulnerable children. According to the project description, “HIV/AIDS has decimated the adult population and means that the children of today will bear more of the burden of building their country in the future. Global studies have highlighted the positive impact of quality preschool education, particularly for disadvantaged children. Less than 30% of children of a pre-primary age in the country attend preschool. The high cost of preschool education means it is not affordable for the many vulnerable families we support, who live below the poverty line.” By providing early childhood education to these vulnerable children, the project ensures that the children will “enter primary school on time and are ready to learn.” More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/educate-a-swazi-child/.

NEXT STOP: ETHIOPIA