As someone who is geographically challenged ( I blame my High School teacher!) it is reassuring to learn that i am not alone in being confused over the location of Darfur. Wikipedia tells us it is a region of far western Sudan. So Sudan is the country and Darfur is only part of it – the part that is hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Darfur doesn’t get a lot of mentions in Dave Eggers’ marvellous novel ‘What Is The What’ where the events occur in the village of Marial Bai , Sudan in general, Ethiopia and Atlanta, USA.
The latter two should have been places of refuge for ‘lost boy’ Valentino Achak Deng but he says at one point: “I knew the world was the same everywhere, that there were only inconsequential variations between the suffering in one place and another“.
This sobering reflection together with the horrific atrocities Deng witnesses and experiences could have made this deeply depressing read. Instead I marvelled at Deng’s courage and capacity to acknowledge harsh realities while still managing to hold on to hope and faith. This makes the overriding tone of this novel one of optimism rather than despair.
As Eggers says in an interview on NPR , what probably helped the lost boys (and girls) to endure was that they had no other concept of what their lives could , and should be. Their only experience had come form the horrific experiences in the aftermath of the civil war.
If you are looking for insights into the causes and possible cures for this conflict, this novel doesn’t set out to give answers. Above all its aim is to raise awareness of the human cost and in centering the story on one individual Eggers achieves this with great compassion. It makes the case for action far more powerfully than official reports and exposes how pathetic political reponses have been up to now.
If you haven’t got this book already, buy it now – even if you don’t read it immediately you will be contributing to rebuilding Sudan since all profits go to the Valentine Achak Deng Foundation, details of which you can get from his website.
