Jewel from Ruth Hartley challenges humanity

Review by Daniel Sikazwe, Zambia Daily Mail, Vol.26 No. 187, 6 August 2022

The book, Dust and Rain, is a jewel that Ruth Hartley has crafted for young readers. Its message transcends age. The book bravely challenges humanity to dispense with modern-day opulence in order to save planet earth from a looming climatic apocalypse. The looming climatic doomsday is announced in a premonition in the very first paragraph of the book by the main character, 11-year-old Chipo when she says: “Something bad is going to happen ... when I look up, I see that the sky isn’t blue. It’s white, hot and so thick that it makes it hard to breathe. I know something up there is watching us. Something is swirling up above us in circles that come closer and closer.”

The circles become, to the reader, a lucid symbolic silhouette of a valley haemorrhaging from scorching heat and the lack of rain, corporate greed bent on excavating the last pristine habitats for copper and a melange of moral deprivation showing up in the form of child trafficking and debasement of human life.

The little lives of two children are enveloped in fear and sometimes despair during a long perilous journey. Chipo aged 11 and her brother Chibwe aged 12, set out to save their valley from a marauding drought. The drought has got the children’s parents weighed down with worry, leading Chipo to ask her brother the question that reveals the theme of the book very early in the story.

“What happens if there is no rain and Pa and Ma can’t grow any vegetables this year?” Chipo asks.

... continued:

“We’ll die of hunger — we’ll starve,” Chibwe says ... “It’s a joke Chipo. We’ll just eat less.”

But the effects of climate change can never be a joke. As if the prospect of having less to eat is not enough, disaster looms. A witch called Kambili arrives riding on a whirlwind and announces her mission when Chibwe asks her, “Who are you?”. Kambili responds: “I am Kambili, child! Don’t anger me! Ever!”

Things come to a head when Kambili casts a spell on the children’s father who cedes control of his farm, family and future to Kambili the witch. This, coupled with Kambili’s drought which sucks rain and productivity out of the valley, propels the children to seek spiritual intervention from a force more powerful than the witch. Chipo and Chibwe set off on a perilous journey to meet a wise woman called Makemba. Their journey is fraught with hurdles the children must contend with.

A wealthy man called Wabenzi wants the two children dead because their plan is at variance with the works of his agent Kambili. Wabenzi wants the drought to stay so he can set up a copper mine in the valley. He kidnaps the children. While in captivity, Chipo is enslaved as a cook. During a rare conversation with another of Wabenzi’s agents called Ma Richwoman, Chipo learns she is earmarked to sell. The woman tells Chipo the current bidder is not good enough.

“He hasn’t got much money and he wastes it all on beer. He can’t afford you.”

The plan is foiled when a community worker familiar with Wabenzi’s evil schemes and business rescues the children from their bondage.

Everything that happens to them makes Chipo and Chibwe learn two major lessons.

First, older people do not give a future to children, they borrow the future from children, hence the need to pay back through prudent environmental stewardship.

Second, humans are an overrated species. Animals still have what children have lost — connection with nature. This lesson is given to Chipo by a bull called Imbolondo on whose back the children ride on their way to meet Makemba in the Evergreen Forest. Imbolondo says, “Humans can choose to make changes to the world. Humans can choose to hurt the world or they can choose to care for it and all the animals and plants that live on it.”

On their way to the Evergreen Forest, Chipo and Chibwe stop over in the Great City to visit their aunt. While in the city, Chipo and Chibwe witness the ravages of AIDS — which has just claimed their cousin’s life. Their Aunt Nchimunya announces the bad news thus:

“We are a house in mourning. My son-in-law has just died from this same dreadful AIDS and my daughter is ill with HIV. I’m nursing her and looking after all of her children.”

When finally Chipo and Chibwe arrive in the Evergreen Forest, Makemba diagnoses the universal climate change problems caused by anthropogenic activities: “People have forgotten that they are part of the natural world. They belong to it but it does not belong to them alone but to all creatures.”

The story of Dust and Rain enhances the creative energy and passions of children to help solve contemporary environmental problems. Hartley has constructed an authentic story embodied by an environment gasping for creative air and energy that can only come from the wills and passions that refuse to be cowed into resignation to the looming climatic apocalypse.

Hartley creatively, intelligently and masterfully presents today’s most vexing problems of climate change propelled by humanity’s insatiable consumerism. She presents the problem in the finest tradition of oratory.

Hartley illuminates the value of African spirituality and indigenous knowledge in addressing problems like climate change. She points out the need to understand the historical damage done by colonial desire for gigantic projects like dams and mines. Reading Dust and Rain makes it clear children must be allowed space on the conversation table to propose solutions to contemporary problems — they must talk for themselves.

The characters in Dust and Rain are simple and easy to understand. They grow into their roles seamlessly. The values for which the characters stand, the problems they face and how they overcome the challenges, are presented as clearly as the familiarity of names and the environments in which the characters in the story exist, thereby making the book a truly African narrative.

In Dust and Rain Hartley uses the first person point of view as the story is predominately told by Chipo aided by her brother Chibwe. The use of the present tense keeps the story fresh and alive.

Chapters are short and the print is big, making the book easy to read — by both children and adults. The language is simple. It is mind-boggling how an adult like Hartley so credibly writes about a world inhabited by children despite being more than half a century older than it.

The use of local names Chipo and Chibwe, Imbolondo, Nchimunya, Makemba and her preference for African names of people, places, animals and vegetation makes the story truly and authentically African. Dust and Rain is a book that the Zambian curriculum developers must read and integrate into the education system.

Environmental educators and other adults must read it to learn how to more effectively and creatively communicate environmental science messages.
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