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The Ugandan writer Glaydah Namukasa evokes poetic memories of Langston
Hughes’s enduring lines in A Dream Deferred in her
debut young-adult fiction. Her novel, Voice of a Dream, does
not pretend to lay claim to any Langstonian influence, however.
It barely operates as a poetic text, although the author’s
style of writing is at once mellifluous. A poem even appears somewhere
in the pages. Voice of a Dream appears to be a simple story
of a simple girl with a simple dream. You may call it an AIDS story
with a difference. But it does not seek to explore the myths and
facts of the dreaded disease or blare out its horridness into our
minds. Instead, the theme of AIDS serves as a mere backdrop for
the well-paced plot. A backdrop, fleeting yet haunting.
The storyline is not unfamiliar, particularly with families living
in the developing countries. The overriding themes in the novel
are timely and significant, now that Africans have become increasingly
aware of the frightening numbers of people suffering from HIV. There
is no doubt that Africa is the region most affected by the virus.
Voice of a Dream is set predominantly in Kitala, Uganda,
a country known more for the phantom of her infamous late despot
Idi Amin Dada than for her revival of a flourishing literature.
The novel reads initially as a love story, as foreshadowed in the
prologue. A neat romantic tale of two teenagers, Nanfuka and Sendi,
who live in disparate social environments. In the first chapter
Sendi attempts to sweet-talk Nanfuka into having sex him, but it
goes amiss, or rather it turns out botched due to the latter’s
refusal. Thereafter, the story gradually spins into waves of misfortune
that crash one after the other over Nanfuka, as she is summoned
home from school.
Told in omniscient multiple POV, much of the story revolves around
Nanfuka, the 16-year-old, who is compelled to cope with the crisis
in her family. She has to determine what is most important, the
extent to which she would continue to pursue her dream. She must
also confront the series of hard luck that expose the vulnerability
of her family, that threaten to dissipate all she has come to hold
dear and believe in. In the wake of this, she must resist the estrangement
that shadows the possibility of growing up as an orphan and the
cynicism that accompanies unexpected “parenthood.”
Her father is dying (eventually dies) of AIDS, her mother is nowhere
to be seen, and her insensitive father’s sister Aunt Naka
is just too desperate to marry her off to a man three times her
senior. Therefore, with no parents to support her in a world as
cruel as it is tumultuous, Nanfuka abandons her “preciously
balanced days” and her “varied enjoyments of school,”
and struggles to make sense of the adult ambience in which “joy
is only a dried up banana fiber that breaks the moment she pulls
on it” and a world in which “darkness darkens even the
daylight around her.”
After the burial of her father, she is saddled with the responsibility
of rearing her four siblings, including baby Anna, her HIV-positive
youngest sister. She learns to get more committed towards tending
the garden, fetching firewood, picking ripe coffee beans, and weaving
sisal and palm leaves into mats to sustain her “children.”
As often is the case with provincial communities and their propensity
for insularity, hers offers her no shelter. No shoulder to lean
on. Instead she is mocked. Covertly alienated, mostly because she
stands a chance of being the “first nurse in Kitala.”
As a student of SLouise, a prestigious secondary school in
the city, she attracts the envy and contempt of her friend Kizza,
her neighbor Maama Jojo, and a few other neighbors.
Evidently, as her family’s misfortune makes it to the gossip
charts in Kitala, and her siblings feed on once-a-meal rations,
sugarless-tea and millet porridge, Nanfuka has no more choice except
to settle down with the well-off elderly suitor her aunt has contracted
on her behalf. Another option is to accept the brash overtures of
her late father’s friend, Uncle Medi, which promise a short-term
succor.
Her row with her boyfriend Sendi further upsets her emotional balance
and, although she builds her hopes on the results of the presidential
elections which guarantee Universal Basic Education (free education)
for all children, assistance would only come when she resorts to
consult her mentor, the amiable and religious Nurse Kina who almost
routinely inspires her. She lays out a list of “ten principles”
to guide Nanfuka in her struggle to become both a happy parent and
nurse.
Nanfuka’s life appears as “fragments of charred grass,”
yet she decides to “never give up,” by selling mats
and baskets in the open market. The most emotive scene is when Aunt
Naka threatens to sell the land and take away Nanfuka’s siblings.
Luck runs into her, nonetheless, when a French couple buys some
quantities of mats from her, and her Maama returns home weary and
remorseful.
Voice of a Dream is a book both children and youths will
enjoy, not only because of the well-crafted tapestry of its rich
and lucid diction, but because it intersperses harmonious imageries
that reinforce the atmosphere and pathos of the story. The imageries
of the ragged herd-boy, the avid kite and the Crested Crane and
others, imbue the plot with a nuanced grounding. The characters
are of course genuine. And the reader will no doubt empathize with
them, because of their resonance.
It is interesting to observe the burning pang that desire (love?)
breeds in the youth and the gloom that settles over the heart in
such moments, as exemplified by Sendi’s situation when he
is scorned and distanced by Nanfuka. He realizes the folly of propping
up a derivative identity ultimately and, shedding that identity,
experiences a subtle character growth, as it were, in the final
chapters of the novel.
Glaydah Namukasa has written a brilliant novel that is thematically
broad for all children and young adults. It will keep them enthralled.
Piqued at the same time. It is not preachy in any way, or judgmental.
It hints at didacticism, that much is obvious. The romance is maturely
managed so that it does not dovetail into melodrama. The author
has also pointed out other varied themes: forced marriage, child
labor, peer influence, pre-marital sex and abortion. Literacy is
also at the core of the narrative, because education remains instrumental
in attaining one’s dream. Her descriptions are vivid so also
is her depiction of destitution so that the reader easily relates
to happenings in those parts of Uganda. The entire tone of the story
undulates from the jaunty to the nostalgic, reflecting the emotional
ebb and flow of Nanfuka and Sendi, characteristic of teenagers and
the way they “come of age.”
Little wonder then Voice of a Dream won the Senior Award
in the 2006 Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa. The bottom-line:
this is a story of a dream realized. The power of a dream.  |
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