The Sunday Mail
Somewhat amusing, surprising, and mixed with a taint of seriousness, “Somewhere in this Country” — a collection of short stories — reveal an unmistakable stamp of Chirere’s simplicity. That is no coincidence largely because the short story genre itself encourages simplicity. Usually containing a simple plot, with (often times) a single theme and few characters, the short story genre awakens an urge for simplicity among many an author.
It resonates with many readers, especially those with a folklore tradition because many folklore griots thrive on simplicity and repetition of the single subject.
Memory Chirere was inspired by Luis Bernado Honwana, an accomplished journalist and short story griot from Mozambique.
Chirere refers to Honwana as, “the Southern African short story griot”. In his famous story, “We killed Mangy Dog” Honwana portrays vividly a sickly and skeletal dog.
The simple description of that dog is heart-rending and telling — a hallmark of simplicity.
The dog is described as thus: ”Mangy dog had blue eyes with no shine in them at all, but they were enormous and always filled with tears that ticked down his muzzle.
They frighten me those eyes, so big, and looking at me like someone looking for something without wanting to say it”.
The simple description is so apt in portraying the vulnerability and depraved state of the black person under colonial oppression as symbolised by Mangy dog.
The idea of bonny dog, like a chorus, is constantly hammered to produce an engraving effect of the mind and elicits empathy.
Chirere’s simplicity is more pronounced. His humour and playfulness, carries the simplicity to amazing heights in his anthology, “Somewhere in this Country”.
The stories contained in the said anthology are crafted in a plain simple manner.
Each story is a literary thread which, with other stories, combining together like a symphony, create a fabric of ordinary and universal concerns ranging from love, the quest for belonging, and race relations.
Chirere achieves that through plain but mellow language which capitalise on short sentences.
The sentences are so powerful because of their brevity and compressed from (effective like an assegai — a short stabbing spear used victorious by Tshaka’s soldiers).
For instance the short story “Keresenzia” opens a thus, “she was a small girl with a hooked nose and brown hair”.
To emphasise on the simplicity streak, again the anthology under consideration employs the use of anti-heroes.
These are seemingly unassuming characters whom anyone can identify with. Chirere deviates from the norm of employing “larger than life” characters whom everyone would aspire to be. But not in “Somewhere in this Country”: Why, the characters strike a responsive chord in virtually every heart: an ordinary goat, a small boy’s young “watchful” eyes observing life while seated on the sink, a nagging orphan, a destitute old man and so on! Behind the use of these seemingly “down-to-earth” characters, the collection “Somewhere in this Country” attempt a critique of deeper issues of life.
That can only be achieved by a master of simplicity, Memory Chirere.
Vuso Mhlanga, the writer, lectures in Advanced Level History and literature in English at Denmak Training Services.
