Self-isolating with good literature

FUN-loving and gregarious by nature, Zimbabweans aren’t particularly good at self-isolating, and twenty one days of solitude is a big ask, even for those who claim to love their own company. The novelty of preparing store cupboard meals wearing thin, and the failure of the Easter rabbit to show up this year having dented my customary optimism in the face of adversity, I turned to one of my favourite past times – reading.

The Boy Who Loved Camping
By John Eppel
Pigeon Press, 123 pp., 2020 ISBN: 978-1-77906-144-7

Do you remember the moment when suddenly you were able to decipher the meaning of the printed word, and to enter a magical world of different people, new landscapes and a variety of unimagined experiences? Literature has the ability to inspire and transport the reader, so what better way to reduce your stress level while confined to the four walls of your one-bedroomed flat, than re-reading old favourites, or checking out new publications from some of Zimbabwe’s best known writers.

Charles Mungoshi’s Waiting for the Rain is as riveting a read now as it was when I first read it in the 80s. Set in the Zimbabwe of the 1960s it was written at the height of the Second Chimurenga in 1975. Lucifer, the main character, journeys home to say good bye to his family. Admired because he has been attending school, he’s now about to go overseas to study art. Ignoring the advice of Uncle Kuruku not to abandon the African way of life, he departs, callously leaving behind the large tub of peanut butter lovingly prepared for him by Old Mandisa, the matriarch of the Mandengu family.

Nervous Conditions, by Tsitsi Dangarembga, is also set in the 1960s. This powerful coming of age novel deals with the themes of poverty and the difficulties women face in achieving their ambitions. Tambu, a young girl from a rural background, dreams of a western education. Tambu’s mother is unhappy at the prospect, saying that she will ‘come home a stranger, full of white ways, white ideas.’ But the strong-minded Tambu wins a scholarship and with the help of wealthy Babamukuru enters the Young Ladies College of the Sacred Heart in Umtali.

Fast forward to 2020, to The Boy who Loved Camping, by John Eppel, published recently by Pigeon Press in Bulawayo. Eppel, a prolific Zimbabwean author and former English teacher at Christian Brothers College, is now retired and living in Bulawayo.

A master in evoking the spirit of place in both poetry and prose, Eppel has won numerous literary prizes. Some of his stories have been described as uncomfortably funny, with bawdy language often in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and his poems described as uncomfortably sad.

It’s tempting to assume that most of the plot in The Boy who Loved Camping is reality fiction, and that the adventures of Tom Smith are those of a younger John Eppel. Book One, set in the late 1950s, describes the life of a white family living in a small town in Matabeleland. While not a dysfunctional family, Tom’s parents and grandmother are definitely rough around the edges. Tom’s father and mother refer to each other respectively as the Old Queen, and the Old Goat, while Ouma, an elderly beer drinker, amuses herself by singing rude songs in Afrikaans.

Tom loves exploring the bush with his fox terrierJimmy, and they often go on camping trips together. Also central to the narrative is the boyish passion Tom develops for the Indian store keeper’s beautiful 20 year-old daughter, Neela. The story takes a dark turn after Neela’s death.

Family conflict and irreconcilable differences come to a head, and Book Two is set in the 1970s, after Tom has severed ties with his parents and gone to live in England. We sympathise with Tom, and trust him, but never discover the cause of the schism.

Eppel never reveals what has alienated Tom from his family, but taunts the reader by suggesting that ‘Tom holds a shocking secret, a secret only the more perceptive reader will uncover.’ Eppel writes with frankness about his family, but falls short of laying bare all the experiences of Tom’s childhood and teenage years.

Find a copy of the Boy Who Loved Camping, read it while you self-isolate, and form your own conclusions.

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