Memoir Reading Blog #4

During their first Christmas in Africa (1996), Scott and Krystyne make the decision to fly up to Lake Turkana for a vacation. Considered politically hostile by the Kenyan government due to the actions of the Turkana tribe, Lake Turkana is nevertheless a fascinating from a geographical and sociological point of view. Scott and Krystyne fly into the safari lodge operated by an eccentric German named Wolfgang Dechter, and are soon out exploring the region. At one point a young Samburu warrior named Kipsoi attempts to sell Scott his spear. Scott offers Kipsoi a ride in his plane in exchange for the spear, which Kipsoi eagerly agrees to. Soon enough Scott, Krystyne, and Kipsoi all pile into the plane and head off to South Island. A barren volcanic island located on one end of Lake Turkana. Foolishly, Scott decides to land on the island on a stretch of black lava beach. Scott then describes the ensuing crash, "The plane's wheels sank into the sand. Too late, I realized, I was in trouble. I pulled hard on the stick, trying to hold the plane's tail from rising, but as the front tires dug deeper into the sand, the nose pitched forward, planting itself firmly into the beach." Now stranded in the middle of Lake Turkana, Scott manages to contact Wolfgang, and is eventually rescued by a major in the Kenyan army. The major, unfortunately, is killed shortly after by a rebel attack, during which his helicopter is shot down. Martial law is imposed in the surrounding area, thus prohibiting Scott and Krystyne from leaving Wolfgang's resort. During this time, Scott makes an unsuccessful attempt to rescue his plane, crashing it again in the process.

I admire Scott's determination to rescue his plane in this chapter. He was lucky enough to survive two crashes, and yet he still wants to rescue his plane from South Island. As he lifts off in the major's chopper, Scott think to himself, "As we lurched out over the whitecaps of the lake I cast one final look at my plane, lying broken and sad on the beach. At that moment I made a solemn promise to myself to return and rescue her no matter the cost." Almost every flier in Africa has crashed a plane at least once landing on dangerous landing strips, but for Scott, the struggle to get over losing a plane is much more personal, since he flew all the way across the Atlantic in his plane. The plane represents his own personal endeavor to make a difference in Africa, and he simply cannot bring himself to leave it to fall apart on South Island. Therefore, despite the discouragment of his peers, Scott begins to look for a way to rescue his plane.

Memoir Reading Blog #3

After installing Krystyne and himself in Nairobi, Scott begins his task of transforming the Flying Doctors Service into an efficient aid-providing service. Scott's first impression of the Flying Doctor's hanger is very poor. The hangar is an absolute mess, with loose paperwork, spare parts, and office equipment scattered all over the place. As Scott puts it, "It was all an invitation to waste, inefficiency, and loss of money." Scott also meets many of the pilots, engineers, and nurses with whom he'll be working for the next two years. Jim Heather Hayes, Colin Davies, Benoit Wangermez, Trevor Jones, Ahmed Ali, Bettina Vadera, and David Mutava are just some of the employees of the Flying Doctors Service who have given up their livelihood in order to help other people. Scott also has the opportunity to fly with the last active founding member of the Flying Doctors Service, Anne Spoerry. Anne joined the Flying Doctors Service in 1959 and has been flying to remote areas of Kenya to dispense medical aid and advice ever since. Scott flies with her on a routine visit to a remote area in the north of Kenya near Lake Turkana. He is amazed by her efficiency and the attachment she has formed with the most remote tribes in Kenya, who affectionately call her "Mama Daktari".

The dedication of the employees of the Flying Doctors Service stuck both Scott Griffin and myself. Scott commented on the employees,

"What struck me most about working at the hangar was the dedication of the Flying Doctors Service employees. They earned pitifully low wages and could expect no personal gain from their extraordinary efforts, their desire to help others. Somehow, it reawakened my faith in mankind; here was a higher order of morality, one understood and practiced by the African nurses, the mechanics, and the ambulance drivers."

It genuinely puzzles me as to how these people's minds work. What gives a person that overwhelming urge to help others, no matter how great the sacrifice in his or her own life. All of these employees genuinely want to make a difference in the lives of other people, and I commend them for that. Hearing about the situation of some of these tribes was also a shock to me. Most receive absolutely no medical attention other than the Flying Doctors Service, which is grossly underfunded for such a monumental task. In addition to routine checkups, the Flying Doctors Service is also called on to for emergency evacuations. Car crashes, malaria, AIDS, dengue, and falciparum were just some of the situations that the pilots and nurses had to respond to in an average day's work. Their efforts yield an amazingly high success rate for such a disorganized enterprise. It amazes me that they're able to continue to work with such dedication, even when their entire organization is literally imploding around them.

Memoir Reading Blog #2

This section of My Heart is Africa covers the arrival of Scott Griffin and his wife Krystyne in Kenya and their subsequent first few days in Nairobi. After flying to Djbouti from Egypt, Scott finally begins the last leg of his voyage to Kenya. Finally arriving in Nairobi, Scott is immediately befriended by his taxi driver, Michael, whom he keeps on as a chauffeur until he purchases his own car. It is Michael that first suggests that Scott stay at the Nairobi Club, a somewhat shabby hotel founded and built by tradesmen in 1921 as a protest to exclusive up-country white hotels that provided similar services. Michael also offers to show Scott the city, which he does the next day. Scott is shocked when Michael takes him to Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, to visit his brother. Michael's brother, Isaiah, lives in a tiny, sparsly funushed hut with five other men. Unbelievably, more than 55 per cent of Kenyans who occuby Nairobi live in slums like this. This section of the novel also details some of the problems facing the Flying Doctors Service, such as a lack of funding from AMREF and the Flying Doctor's Society, the latter of which raised and controlled the funds meant for the Service. The Society, however, was completely out of touch with the operating requirements of the Flying Doctors Service, leaving the FDS nearly bankrupt.

Scott Griffin does an excellent job of reconstructing the lives of the average Kenyans. Many of them live in slums where, as Scott puts it, "The press of humanity was suffocating to the outsider." However, Scott comments on an interesting phenomenon about African slums. Many of the Kenyans who manage to raise themselves from the mud of slums such as Kibera end up longing to return there. As strange as this sounds, the close quarters of Kiberia give comfort to its residents. Another quotation that caught my interest was when Scott described Kibera by calling it impressive. He says,

"There was something impressive about Kibera. In spite of the dirt, poverty, and unsanitary conditions, there was a social order that I found extraordinary. The intensity and vibrancy of close quarters, shared hardships, and the mix of generations gave Kibera a sense of community. This enormous congregation of people, mired in pollution, without police or government, had a commonality of purpose which focused on day-to-day survival. It was unlike anything else I witnessed in Nairobi during my two-year stay there."

The way that Scott puts it, I think that it is impressive that people manage to survive, and even thrive, in such conditions. The bonds that are formed in such a way are stronger than the allure of material wealth could ever be. This experience changed the way that Scott viewed Africa, and the people that inhabit it. It certainly would have for me.

Too Bad About Mrs. Ferri

When he was only eight, August Kleinzahler's neighbour was shot as a result of a mob hit. This would seem like a terrifying experience to most of us, but Kleinzahler seems to have taken it quite well. There seems to have been a great many interesting characters in Kleinzahler's childhood neighbourhood. Indeed, he is able to remember much about these various people, but only from an eight-year-old's perspective, which is somewhat different than that of an adult. Kleinzahler succeeds in retelling stories about his neighbours by telling the story as an adult, but at the same time inserting the emotions and feelings that he had in those stories as an eight-year-old. For example, he comments on his school antics, saying, "Other popular terms of abuse were "faggot" and "douche." The use of the latter is somewhat mysterious; it was directed exclusively at other males and no one had any idea what a douche bag was." Kleinzahler is retelling us the story as an adult, but at the same time he acknowledges the fact that at the age of eight he had no idea what calling someone a douche bag meant. This melding of maturity and first-hand experience make it much easier for us to associate with Kleinzahler as an young child.

Memoir Reading Blog #1

The novel that I've selected for my Memoir Reading Blog is called My Heart is Africa. The novel retells the experience of Scott Griffin, a successful businessman and pilot. Griffin signed on with the Flying Doctors Service in 1996 for a two-year term. The Flying Doctors Service is a branch of AMREF that provides routine and emergency medical aid to remote African communities. The beginning of the memoir recounts Griffin's flight from Canada to Nairobi in his single-engine Cessna 180, named Charlie Foxtrot Whisky Mike Juliet. Departing from St. John's, Newfoundland, Griffin flies to the Azores, refuels there, then passes through Portugal, Algeria, Malta, and Cyprus on his way to Luxor, Egypt. From Luxor, Griffin is poised to enter Africa. After several in flight malfunctions and roughly 50 hours of flight time, Africa is within his reach.

From the beginning of the memoir I enjoyed Griffin's descriptive detail. Since this part of the novel takes place mostly in his plane, the descriptions that he can give of scenery are unbelievable. Griffin's bird's eye view of scenery as he made his way to Africa must have been phenomenal to have compelled him to write with such detail.

"Even more impressive is the night sky over the desert at Luxor. It fires the imagination. The sun sinks below the western hills of Luxor in a conflagration of red and orange, burning the desert. Suddenly, a fall of midnight blue ushers in the first magnitude stars - the early arrivals. A curtain of darkness spreads over the desert, hosting a crowd of lesser stars., the smaller stitches of heaven."

Examples of descriptive detail such as this are frequent in My Heart is Africa. They are a great addition to the novel, as they give you a sense of perspective and an image of the beauty of the natural world.

The Dog, the Family: A Household Tale

August Kleinzahler has had a very unique childhood. How many people can claim that they were brought up by the family dog? Kleinzahler's entire family also have very unique and interesting personalities. This uniqueness can be seen in the form of his father's obsession with bodhisattvas, or the slave-like behaviour of his mother to his grandfather. Kleinzahler's clever use of diction in Cutty, One Rock set a light and slightly humorous tone to the novel. The antics of Kleinzahler's dog, Granny, are especially important in establishing a joking undertone to the memoir. Such trivial antics, while they appear lighthearted, have obviously made enough of an impression on Kleinzahler to have stayed with him throughout his life. Kleinzahler also does a fantastic job of describing his family. His descriptions include vivid images of his family. A perfect example of this is his sister's so-called "pixie hairdo". Kleinzahler seems to have led an interesting and eventful life, and I look forward to finishing his memoir.

The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle is a memoir of the life of Jeannette Walls. The use of diction in this novel is impressive. Jeannette Walls has a very detailed way of describing things that appeals to me. Not even the smallest detail escapes her observation. An example of this precision can be seen in the first chapter, in which she describes her mother's behaviour while picking through garbage. "Mom's gestures were all familiar - the way she tilted her head and thrust out her lower lip when studying items of potential value...the way her eyes widened with childish glee when she found something she liked." The tone of Walsh's writing is also interesting. While Walsh's family was raised in abject poverty, she still grew up with supportive and loving parents. She also had a very stable household life, which is somewhat unusual for families as poor as her. When she grows up she is a bit embarrassed by her parents' financial state, but she was never bothered by their poverty while she was a kid. An example of this could be her parents refusal to let her believe in Santa Claus. They tell her that other kids are fooled by their parents into believing in Santa, and that she must, "try not to look down on those other children. It's not their fault that they've been brainwashed into believing silly myths." These creative explanations add a suprisingly brighter tone to the memoir. You would expect that Walsh wouldn't want to relive the memories of her childhood poverty, but she seems to recall those early years with fondness. This creative use of tone and diction results in a very interesting and inventive memoir.