Radiance of Tomorrow - Ishmael Beah

Beah, Ishmael. Radiance of Tomorrow. Toronto: Viking, 2014

How much hate does it take to make chopping off a child's hands with a machete acceptable, even honourable? How callous does a company need to be to feel blasé about ruining the water supply of an indigenous village in order to establish a profitable mine? 

 How forgiving does one need to be in order to go on living after the atrocities against one's people and family have marched in endless progress up to the very borders of hell?

Ishmael Beah's second novel (A Long Way Gone was the earlier one) doesn't purport to answer such questions; it simply tells the story of a people trying with whatever resources they can scrounge together to survive in a Sierra Leone ravaged by brutal civil war and the savaging of their country by multi-national mining interests. Not a political novel, it paints a portrait of a people caught in the ravages of the turmoil that is Western Africa in troubled times, bringing matters down to the intimate, the personal, the what-it's-like-to-live-it level. 

 

The poignant opening scene has bedraggled survivors straggling back “home”after the civil war, a conflict that decimated and scattered their community. Led by a few returning elders, the survivors gradually rebuild a life as normal as they can with few resources and the constant haunting of the horrors they've all been through. One family now lives next door to a former child soldier who, under orders, inflicted on them the violent amputation of four out of their six hands.

At the centre of Beah's story, Bockarie and his family are followed through a series of transitions not of their devising. Bockarie is a teacher and as the village reestablishes a school, his occupation seems secured. But civil war and turmoil provide breeding ground for corruption as persons struggle to survive with all their confidence in the humanity of “the system” destroyed. Even fellow villagers can exercise fraud as a coping habit, teachers' salaries can be siphoned off by management and eventually the only option might be to work for the hated mining company—or starve.

Ishmael Beah sometimes writes a bit like Grandma Moses or William Kurelak paint. Particularly in the dialogue, the local patois is allowed to live as found, giving the scenes of encounter a homespun, naive-like quality (as art, that is).

“Good morning. Was sleep generous to you and your family? Has the world greeted you kindly this morning . . . ?” the children repeated to everyone they encountered (39).

But naivete is a concept only to those who consider themselves sophisticated in comparison to someone else. The wisdom of Beah's characters may not be the wisdom of science, knowledge and first-world sophistication, but what shines through it all is the wisdom of the ages, the deep, universal wisdom borne by story and the passing on of time-tested lore. It is about respect for the guidance of one's elders, a concept foreign to much of Western society. It's about obedience to inherited knowledge and humility and patience in the face of tribulation. 

It's about a wisdom that Western culture has largely dismissed as naive, unnecessary. 

Not that this wisdom isn't severely tested, even to those who live inside it. In a world in which profitability and economic growth provide the yardsticks by which all human endeavour is measured, even Mama Kadie's gentle wisdom may end up trampled into dust.

I am North American. I've never been to Africa. But as a “sophisticated” North American I know that my roots—anthropologically—are in Africa. But I also live alongside an aboriginal population whose culture was largely destroyed by the collaboration of Christian churches and economic interests, and the horror of “manifest destiny” thinking. Radiance of Tomorrow provided me with another window of insight into mine and West African's place in the world, mine and my aboriginal neighbours' relative placement on the planet.

The title, Radiance of Tomorrow, is an expression of hope from an elder:

“'We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always been our strength. This is all I wanted to say.' [Mama Kadie] turned away form the crowd (167).”

It's what Christians call faith, or possibly hope . . . or both.