Waiting by Goretti Kyomuhendo
First published in 2007 by the Feminist Press.
In November, we’ll be discussing Goretti Kyomuhendo’s Waiting, a novel about the experiences of a small town family in the midst of the violence and repression of Idi Amin’s dictatorship in the 1970s.
Safe for years in their remote country village far from Amin’s political battlefield, teenager Alinda and her family experience terror firsthand when the troops of the self-proclaimed “Last King of Scotland” use the local highway to escape pursuing Ugandan and Tanzanian allied forces. With her pregnant mother on the verge of labor, her brother anxious to join the Liberators, and a house full of hungry siblings, neighbors, and displaced refugees, Alinda learns what it takes to survive, and eventually to plan for a new life.
From reviews and commentaries:
• Publisher’s Weekly
Ugandan author Kyomuhendo’s unsettling and richly atmospheric U.S. debut illustrates the terrible plight of a family struggling to survive the last months of Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship in 1979. Terrorized by Amin’s soldiers fleeing Tanzanian forces allied with anti-Amin Ugandans, 13-year old Alinda hides out with her family on a farm in the western town of Hoima. Her postal clerk father snatches news of the invading soldiers from the city, while eldest son Tendo serves as a semi-reliable lookout. Grandmother Kaaka, younger daughter Maya, and other neighbors sharing the hideout, along with Alinda’s pregnant mother, who goes into labor just as the soldiers arrive. Although the baby miraculously survives, Alinda’s mother is killed, and Alinda must cook and care for the smaller children. Difficulties arise as brother Tendo runs off to join the “Liberators,” and Alinda’s female friend, Jungu, an outcast child of mixed Indian and black heritage, falls in love with a Tanzanian solider and aims to become the first female member of the army.
• Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review
In not dwelling on the frontline horrors of the Amin regime or the war to topple him, and in focussing instead on the rural experience during these times Waiting offers a useful perspective. Kyomuhendo’s story is fairly simple and quick — many authors would have fleshed out this material and made a book several times this length of it, and one occasionally wishes she had as well — but still rich and evocative, making for a memorable novella. An appealing family portrait, of conditions very unlike those known to most Western readers, Waiting is certainly a small-scale success.
• Kathe Davis, FemSpec, Volume 9, Issue 2 (2008)
Kyomuhendo portrays good men: serious, responsible, and loving, of a type conspicuous also in her three earlier novels…. But Kyomuhendo’s conscious feminism is also apparent in her focus on women (of all ages) and her unsparing depiction of a patriarchal society, even apart from the brutality of militarization and war: an uncle converts to Islam to please Amin and thereby benefits himself, blithely taking two new wives; Alinda’s brother Tendo feels he must be a soldier. In this environment, the women do the heavy lifting, pragmatically handling the disastrous consequences of torrential rains, earthquakes, and landmines, as well as the depredations of the soldiers, both friends and enemies. Kyomuhendo depicts without sentimentality the mutual aid by which they survive (mostly) the damages of the deranged Amin and the war by and against him. The brief narrative ends in hope despite loss, as the reconfigured “family” plans its future – including and especially a return to school for the girls – and admires spring’s gorgeous new life.
• Lynda Gichanda Spencer, African Studies Review, Volume 50, Number 3, December 2007
One stylistic device that Kyomuhendo draws on extensively is oral tradition, delicately infusing the narrative with proverbs, myths, and legends passed on through the voices of women. When Alinda’s pregnant mother complains that the potatoes that she has eaten have given her heartburn, Kaaka disagrees; her explanation for the heartburn is “the baby you are carrying has a lot of hair.” Indeed: when the baby is born, Alinda observes that her brother had lots of hair.
Alinda’s story ends with hope, but given the subsequent history of Ugandan politics, it is an unfulfilled hope. This novel is about the devastating effects of war, the afflictions that Ugandans have had to endure for decades, their resilience to continue surviving in tumultuous regimes, and their enduring hope that one day it may all end. It is about waiting for peace…
We will be talking about Waiting on:
US: Monday, 25 November
8-9PM Eastern
7-8PM Central
6-7PM Mountain
5-6PM Pacific
Australia: Tuesday, 26 November
12 Noon-1PM Australian Eastern
11:30AM-12:30PM Australian Central
Sign up for the Wafer-Thin Books mailing list for the Zoom invitation.
