When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

In the past couple of weeks, I've read a lot in the news about Zimbabwe -- the cholera epidemic, continued political turmoil, and the near collapse of the social and economic fabric that has been getting progressively worse since 1980 when Robert Mugabe took power. What led me to stop and read the news stories about Zimbabwe was a book I just finished, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin, a journalist and author who was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in New York. This memoir covers a period between 1996 and 2004, when Godwin returns many times to Africa after his father has a heart attack up until the time he delivers his father's body to a funeral pyre. The country is coming apart at the seams as Mugabe's followers begin throwing white farmers off of their land in a massive land take-over that ultimately precipitated the extreme poverty and starvation currently gripping the country. That's the backdrop for the stories of Godwin's family, which he tells with a lot of love. As his father is recovering from the heart attack, Peter comes across a photograph of a woman and young girl, and learns from his mother that the woman is Peter's grandmother and the girl, his aunt, who perished at Treblinka. It is only then that Peter learns that his father is Jewish, born Kazimierz Jerzy Goldfarb in Poland, rather than George Godwin born in Britain. Thus, the displacement of white Zimbabweans takes on new meaning for the Godwins.

For [Kazimierz}, Africa is clearly the antidote to Europe's great burden of history, the blood feuds and the destruction, the prejudices and the pogroms and the Holocaust. It is a place where he can wipe his memory of past hurt and start again.

But, of course, some 60 years later George and Peter both find themselves repeating history.

Godwin is not only a great writer, but he really knows his stuff and delivers what seems to be an inside look at Zimbabwean culture. Here's one short passage:

A sultry black waitress named Temptation talks us through the menu: smoked crocodile, tiger fish mousse, roast mopani worms, ostrich terrine, impala stew, warthog steak. While we eat, a woman offers to braid my hair with extensions, and a man in a loincloth declares he is PingePinge,a witch doctor, and would like to tell my fortune.

Godwin observes not only his father's failing health and both of his parent's desperate attempts to salvage their lives in Zimbabwe, but also his own personal loss of home.

I can't bear the guilt, the feeling of responsibility. I can't lug the skins of my forebears on my back wherever I go. I will be just like my father. I will dispel from my head all the arcane details of this place, the language, the history, the memory. I will turn my back on the land that made me. Like Poland was to him, Africa is for me: a place in which I can never truly belong, a dangerous place that will, if I allow it to, reach into my life.

This is a really good book told by a remarkable man, who despite his many accomplishments maintains his humility and keeps his eyes open as he observes the world around him.

I think I've been reading too many books about the dark places in the world and the dark times in history. But I can't stop myself. I find these stories too compelling and important to resist. Maybe a brief respite into something lighter... oh no, that will have to wait because I've already started my next book about the siege of Sarajevo. More to come...