adminElliot Ziwira
At the Bookstore
In “A Cowrie of Hope”, Binwell Sinyangwe, explores a widow’s struggles in raising her daughter single-handedly, and send her to secondary school, believing that if given a chance, the child will not only free them from poverty, but will also get an opportunity to climb up the echelons of social and financial freedom.
Nevertheless, a combination of hold-ups seems determined to thwart her dreams. It is this that tests the mother’s resilience as a hen eagle in a jungle where eaglets are a delicacy.
“A Cowrie of Hope” is the tale of Belita Bowa, or Nasula (mother of Sula) and her daughter, Sula, which ironically means “let things be”.
But will Nasula simply let things be?
Set in the Zambia of the 1990s, the novel tackles issues of transition in African countries as governments change. “The new people in government” have brought a lot of changes in policies which negatively impact the majority.
As the story unfolds, Fredrick Chiluba has taken over from Kenneth Kaunda and his revolutionary party and “the days were truly hard”. A combination of new policies and the vagaries of nature compound the challenges of the ordinary man.
Using the modernism trope, Sinyangwe examines the dire straits that visit Zambia in its attempt to move forward. Playing his role as the voice of the voiceless, he raps the voyeur inherent in Man that draws excitement from trauma.
Sinyangwe’s creation of symbolic elements, images and metaphors through setting and characterisation, gives the story a unique flair that hoists the reader on a whirlwind voyage of suspense and intrigue. The agony of motherhood depicted in this story of hope in the face of futility cannot be told in any other way.
Sinyangwe writes: “These were the nineties. The late nineties. They were lean years. They were the years of each person for himself and hope only under the shadow of the gods. No one wanted to give because no one had anything to spare. . . The years of the rule of money. The years of havelessness, bad rains and the new disease. The harsh years of madness and evil!”
Nasula, a widow described as “poverty itself” is flung into such a world.
Using flashback, Sinyangwe takes the reader to the happier years when Nasula’s husband, Winelo is still alive, and juxtaposes it with the present one of anguish. Though Winelo is not a saint, as he sometimes abuses his wife emotionally, since she relies on him for her well-being, and later on dies at the hands of the police because of his wayward nature, he provides for his family.
On Winelo’s death the house he bought for his family in Lusaka’ is sold, and the money in his bank account is pounced on by his family—the Chiswebes, reducing his family to penury and vagabondage.
Sinyangwe carefully tackles the brunt of inheritance issues on the surviving spouse in the absence of knowledge of the law. Nasula is told that if she wants to benefit, she has to become Isaki Chiswebe’s fourth wife and join the family at the farm. Her refusal to play ball confines her to poverty: “she wore it like her own skin”.
Having relocated to Swelini, her home area, Nasula struggles in her determination to send her daughter to school.
“She understood the importance of education and wanted her daughter to go far with schooling.
“She understood the unfairness of the life of a woman and craved for emancipation, freedom and independence in the life of her daughter. Emancipation, freedom and independence from men”.
Dreams are what the underprivileged feed on, grappling with the mountains that are thrown in their paths. No wonder why Nasula trudges on as she sees a silver lining in the dark clouds yonder, for in her daughter Sula a cowrie of hope beckons.
Keeping the promise alive, Sula passes her primary school examinations with flying colours, and is offered a place at a boarding secondary school, St Theresa Girls in Kasama.
About 100 000 kwacha is required and Nasula, “with not even one coin, anywhere in the world”, is depressed, but the pangs of motherhood gives her a new resolve.
She decides to swallow her pride, after nine years, and head for Chiswebe Farm to talk to Isaki, her brother-in-law and his father Chiswebe about their child’s predicament. However, the poverty that greets her at the compound; a stark contrast of what it once was, withers her heart.
Poetic justice has already claimed its dues. Nasula realises that: “She had come to the hearth of the fallen and dying, where, clearly nothing existed to fight or fight for”.
The Chiswebe family has lost everything, including farm equipment and household furniture to creditors, as they have borrowed against their crops which unfortunately could not stand nature’s armoury. And “the new people in government” could not take to such flimsy excuses.
Isaki, seriously sick at her arrival, capitulates to “the disease that had afflicted (him) and his three wives. . . the new unmentionable disease of the world that came of the taste of flesh, the one that makes you thin before taking you”.
Here Sinyangwe highlights the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS in the 1990s as people lack adequate knowledge of the affliction. He also takes a swipe at the government’s insensitivity to the plight of its own people who seem to be punished for the drought as if it is of their own making.
Returning home empty-handed, Nasula decides to take yet another gamble for her daughter.
She decides, against common sense, to borrow seed and fertiliser from the shrewd Pupila, hoping to pay him off and sell the excess produce at a profit, but the gods could have none of it as they hold on to their tears. The determined mother only manages to pay Pupila his dues and returns to the first square of her troubles.
Nasula nostalgically yearns: “They were lucky, those who went to school in the sixties, seventies and eighties, when education was not paid for and everything needed was provided free”.
She realises that when hope dreams are thin, in a world that revolves on issues of the stomach and not those of the heart, a mother dies inside. Espying a distant mountain crouching menacingly in the path of her hopes, Nasula puts all her faith in the gods of her ancestors.
Fortunately, divine intervention comes in the fold of her long forgotten friend, Nalukwi. Assured by her soul mate that the only bag of beans that she has put aside for their keep could fetch 120 000 kwacha in Lusaka, the two poor friends set sail.
Nasula is inspired by one female vendor who tells her: “The mother is the one who feels the pain of a new life coming into the world. She must fight on, alone, for something that her children can swallow.”
As fate would have it, Nasula is conned out of her bag of beans by a well-known affluent swindler, Gode Silavwe, who seems to enjoy immunity from the law, because he can simply bribe the police.
Bewildered, the protagonist asks: “What bad luck is this, God of mercy? Are we not going to be allowed any progress, even with the little in our hands, from our own sweat? When we can’t borrow or beg, like they who are rich?”
Poor as he is, Solwezi takes pity on Nasula, and gives her 20 000 kwacha for bus-fare to Swelini.
He tells her: “Friends, we are strangers to each other, but we are children of the same creator and victims of the same fate here on earth. . . I am a poor man myself. I need every coin I come across . . . I decided to give you this, mother of our children”.
Spurred on by such love which is only a preserve for mothers, Nasula decides to hunt down Gode against all odds and bring him to book for setting her hopes ablaze. After a week of vagabondage, hunger and all, she finds him.
Sadly, nobody comes to her aid as those around seem to enjoy the spectacle; watching the hen eagle that could easily pass for a lunatic claim her fair share of justice. Gode is eventually apprehended when a policeman arrives at the scene. In this part of the world, however, people like Gode are sacred cows. He is allowed to walk scot-free, because of lack of evidence.
All is not lost upon the wind though, as Nasula, still determined, seeks “the boss of everyone. The one at the topmost”, at the station.
Upon finding him, she cries, “Help me; I am a poor woman of no means and with no one to turn to. My daughter will not go to school if you don’t help me”.
Nasula realises that good men still treads this earth when the inspector responsible for Gode’s godfather status, is summoned by his boss and told to go and bring him to the station within the hour, which he promptly does.
Gode, who admits to his folly, is ordered to pay Nasula 150 000 kwacha for Nasula’s beans and all her troubles in locating him. The inspector covering him up is suspended pending dismissal.
Before locking Gode up, the police boss tells him: “You have troubled her a lot. Regard the way she is looking. Does it please you to see a mother looking like this?”
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