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INSIDE AFRICA
Writing on Survival in Africa
Aired October 25, 2008 - 12:30:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ISHA SESAY, HOST: Hello, I'm Isha Sesay. Welcome to INSIDE AFRICA, your weekly window to the continent.
On the program this week, African women authors share their stories. Rwandan genocide survivor Immaculee Ilibagiza explains importance of faith and forgiveness. And Liberian-born "New York Times" correspondent Helene Cooper revisits a privileged childhood interrupted by war and exile.
Cooper and Ilibagiza are both free to tell their stories however they like. But that's not the case for writers in northern Nigeria's Kano region, where most people practice Islam, and Sharia is the law of the land. As Christian Purefoy reports, some popular local women authors and their fans now face strict limits on the subject matter they're allowed to explore.
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CHRISTIAN PUREFOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Risque research material for Mariam Ali and other northern Nigerian female writers, who defy Muslim tradition, tackling delicate issues such as love and marriage, and their books, they claim, are selling in the millions.
MARIAM ALI, NIGERIAN WRITER: Maybe you write something, it's somebody's problems, it doesn't have anybody to discuss that problem with, and here it is in your book. And that woman will be very happy her problem has been discussed and that even had been solved in the book.
PUREFOY: Normally about 90 or so pages long, the books cost between 50 cents and a dollar each, a day's wages for some Nigerians, and have proved especially popular amongst women.
"If there is a problem between me and my partner," Yana (ph) says, "I would know how to deal with it because of the books."
In a region with a conservative, traditional culture, and Sharia law, the books offer women insight into what are thought of as private subjects.
The authors write these books in the regional Hausa language, allowing them to target an audience in areas where English is not extensively used, and traders come to this market from across West Africa.
The books are not as explicit as anything you might be able to pick off the top shelf in the West, but the agency that enforces Sharia law in this region insists all books must be passed by the state's censorship board.
BALA MOHAMMED, KANO OFFICIAL: We have this saying, if you write a book for instance, if you write a storybook, and if a child can read the book to their mother, then that is a good book. But if you can't read it to your mother or father, then there's some risque content in the book.
PUREFOY: But 25-year old Sa'adatu Baba refused to send her books for censorship.
SA'ADATU BABA, NIGERIAN WRITER: I try to (inaudible) in my life, but I couldn't. I lost my mother, I lost my fiance. He is my love, my (inaudible) is my everything.
PUREFOY: Sa'adatu argues she cannot advise one thing to her readers, and act another in day-to-day life.
BABA: I'm always advising women not to -- to be liabilities (ph), to be courageous. Because if you have courage, then you find the way to do something or to get something.
PUREFOY: But with the new restrictions on her writing, she has not yet published any new books. Doing so without approval could get her arrested, and her books seized.
Christian Purefoy, CNN, Kano, Nigeria.
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SESAY: It's a good thing author Immaculee Ilibagiza is completely free to tell her story. She says she can't stop writing. When INSIDE AFRICA continues, the Rwandan genocide survivor discusses her second book, and the importance of forgiveness.
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SESAY: Welcome back to INSIDE AFRICA. Immaculee Ilibagiza burst onto the literary scene in 2006, with her first book, "Left to Tell." The "New York Times" bestseller chronicles her experience as a survivor of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Ilibagiza's personal story continues in her new book, "Led By Faith." I recently sat down with her, in her New York apartment, where she discussed her deeply held faith and some vivid memories of hiding in a pastor's bathroom for 91 terrifying days.
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IMMACULEE ILIBAGIZA, AUTHOR: The first week was horrible. I want to say, how can I sleep in the bathroom? I have my own bed, I have my (inaudible), I have my brothers. Why would anyone want me to be here, just like -- what is going on?
So, the first week was really bad. I was being impatient, I was very angry, like I was so sad that I even believed that there were good people among them.
Then another thing happened. They started to search every home of Hutus. After they have killed thousands of Tutus who went to public places, like stadiums, churches -- now I remember I heard on a radio they gave order to start searching every home. So that was another pain, like agony, something (inaudible). You can have fear like that.
So they started to come, and I never forgot one day they came to search the house, 300 killers. I (inaudible) my friends, to me they're all my friends, my neighbors, and they're talking outside. I remember one guy, who was from my primary school, the same class, who was outside and he said, "I killed 399 cockroaches." And he said, "I want Immaculee to be the 400th." And that is really sad (ph). Does he even know what he is doing?
You know, so they searched. When they searched, it was the worst thing you can ever imagine. To be in a place, knowing that these people can come back anytime, they're five inches away from you, two seconds away from killing you. And they can't forgive you, because what sin have you done? They're just killing you for who you are.
You know, there is a time, especially (inaudible) they were searching, for the first time, I felt like my faith crushed. It was almost like I heard a voice of something, to me it was like the devil, telling me "They're going to kill you. They're going to rape you. They're going to find you in two minutes. You're done. Forget about it. Don't even pray."
And it was almost like another voice was saying, "don't worry. Why don't you ask God for a miracle? Miracles happen. He can do things. He's God almighty." And that was like a quick choice. I'm going to believe this voice. I'm going to ask God, if he's there, show me sign that he's arrived (ph). And please, I know the sign I want. Don't let them find the door of the bathroom.
That time, the first time they came to search, they searched every single place. When they came to -- the last place they were coming to the bathroom. They touched the door of the bathroom, and before they opened it, the pastor told us, who was hiding us -- I was fainting, I was dying, because I knew it was -- a second after, before they opened it, after touching it, they told him, they said, "we trust you. There's no way you can hide these cockroaches." And they went back.
And I started reading the Bible, like page after page. And it was a challenge, because I had so much hatred against the killers. But everything in the Bible was more about, forgive them, let God take over, don't have revenge in your heart. Love people. We're all one.
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SESAY: Immaculee had much more to say about here religious faith. Coming up on INSIDE AFRICA, she tells how she finally overcame her hatred of the people who killed most of her family.
And still ahead, "New York Times" reporter Helene Cooper revisits her privileged childhood in Liberia and the painful way it ended.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Making business news in Africa. Gold producers in Zimbabwe say the Mugabe government is putting a serious dent in the local mining industry, despite soaring global gold prices. By law, they can only sell gold to Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank, and they say the government only pays them about six U.S. cents for ounce. Traders get more than $800 per ounce on the open market.
GREG HUNTER, ZIMBABWEAN GOLD PRODUCER: The cost pressures that we face as well, in terms of consumables in -- in an inflationary economy are also just ginormous. So we've got this massive mismatch between revenue and -- and cost.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ten years ago, the country produced more than 2,500 kilograms of gold a month. The Zimbabwean Chamber of Mines says output has dropped to just 270 kilograms per month.
The International Monetary Fund is praising South Africa's economic policies, but says the country's central bank may need to raise interest rates. In its annual report, the Washington-based lending agency warned that rising inflation could make sub-Saharan Africa's largest economy more vulnerable to the global financial downturn.
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SESAY: You're watching INSIDE AFRICA. Welcome back.
Before the break, author Immaculee Ilibagiza recounted some of her most horrifying memories from the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Most of her family were killed, along with an estimated 800,000 Rwandans. Here, she explains the importance of letting go of hatred, and how her faith helped her do that.
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ILIBAGIZA: I remember reading and saying that our Lord is -- our Lord is (inaudible) and that we be stuck on that point where they say, forgive us, (inaudible), I will forgive those who trespass against us.
I fought so much with God, because now I have made a decision to pray all time, just so that I can really find out who is God. But everything was just about love. So this part of the prayer, our Lord's prayer, I took it off from the prayer, because I thought I can't lie to you. If you see what is in the heart, and it's again, you know, the truth will always come out.
Something was telling me, I hope if you believe in God, if you believe in Christ as your savior, you know, he can't make a mistake. And if he give that prayer, you can't try to edit it.
So I was -- you know, it's not fair. I hate them. I have a good reason. At the end, I came to the conclusion, I said, let me give -- give up everything for him, asking to help me out. I (inaudible) the rosary, which is a prayer from the Bible, the life of Christ. And in that, he was on the cross, and he said, "forgive them, Father, they don't know what they do."
That words -- the words that hit me more, like really hit me, was they don't know what they do. And something was transferred to the killers. How can someone who is trying to kill 400 people knows what he's doing? How can someone who is trying to kill children really can get exactly what he's doing?
It's such a blessing I've been able to write. You know, when I wrote first, it was mostly actual people, and I used to work at the United Nations, and then here (inaudible). And people would always ask me, "why don't you tell you story? Anytime we hear it from you, we will encouraged. We feel like we can overcome anything. Look at you, you are smiling."
And then one time, I started to write it. When I wrote it, I felt that it was not for people. It was for me. It really helped me to put things just in order in my heart, knowing that it's outside of me. It is like a therapy.
I sat down for three weeks. I wrote my first book. When I put my hands down to type on a computer, it was like an obsession. I couldn't stop it, and it was so good to write it. And to know that now my children will be able to read the story of their family, which became a blessing even for my brother, who never knew the details of my family, what happened -- his family, you know. When he came back from Senegal, he was in school, in university, and we met. It's just like so hard, where do you start? Where do you tell somebody that you lost your mom, your daddy, your friends, your uncles. How do you tell that story? So I was always scared of breaking his heart even more. We spoke about -- about really our parents, almost every day, in a way as though they were alive. You know my dad doesn't like that; you know mom doesn't like that.
So when he read a book, he just cried forever, and he couldn't -- he said, how come you never told me? I told him, how come you never asked me? You know it wasn't that easy. He told me, I understand, but I'm glad at last, I know every detail.
When I was writing the first book, I didn't know where to stop. It is really a continuous story. The genocide is not just like a movie, like a drama, like three months, done -- which I did in my first book, to describe what happened.
But how do you live without your mom? How do you live without your dad? What happened to the whole country after this whole thing have just stopped? How the country is progressing? It's like all like about -- let me tell people what happened, how Rwanda was more again populated? Because almost half of the country, a million was killed, and maybe 3 millions ran away from the country. What happened with the killers? What are the stories of the genocide? The miracles, the hand of God, in everything in my life, and it was just too much to hold on.
I really wanted to tell people also that, no matter what happens to you, life moves on, you know. No matter what happens to you, there is hope. And if you -- if I can forgive, you can forgive.
So I think I will continue to write, encourage people to have faith in God, encourage people to really just like find what to do now, more than blaming, and -- and a lot -- I hope I can inspire people to make peace, you know, to make peace with their families, with themselves, with their friends, around and at their communities.
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SESAY: Ilibagiza raises money for orphans in Rwanda and all over Africa. Part of the proceeds from her first book goes to her Left to Tell charitable fund.
"New York Times" reporter Helene Cooper says she used to be "a spoiled little Liberian princess." Up next, she explores her privileged early years and the dramatic events that forced her family into exile.
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SESAY: Welcome back to INSIDE AFRICA. "New York Times" journalist Helene Cooper spent her formative years in Liberia. She enjoyed a life of privilege there until it was shattered by a coup in 1980. She and her family were forced to flee to the United States, and her beloved foster sister Eunice was left behind. After many years of covering stories all over the world, she finally returned to Liberia to write her own. It's called "The House at Sugar Beach." Here, in her own words, she describes her journey.
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HELENE COOPER, AUTHOR: Going home meant going to find my sister. And it wasn't until I found her that has sort of shifted into this I'm a journalist, and for years I've written other people's stories. And I've run away from my own. I've shared nothing. I've brought none of the sort of insight that I could have brought to what was happening in Liberia. I was too -- it was so much easier for me to look at what, you know, look at other stories, cover Iraq, cover Afghanistan, write about September 11th, and I was hiding from my own past.
And it wasn't until I found my sister, when I went back to Liberia, that sort of -- I realized that I had a story to tell. I needed to confront my past. I needed to come to terms with my own history and my family's role in the history of Liberia. And that in order to get back to sort of the part of my childhood that I had blocked out and lost, I had to go back and deal with it. And for me, writing about it was the best way to deal with it.
So I started off writing it, reporting and spending a lot of time with research and interviewing my family. And the first draft ended up being very, very sort of -- not just dense, but a little by the book, and very fact-driven, which is good, but at the same time, it's such a different kind of writing, writing memoir than journalism. And I'm writing about such emotional topics, like loss, and a lot of it is about -- about loss.
When I was 7 years old, my father built a big house on the Atlantic Ocean 11 miles outside of Monrovia. It was a 22-room, huge behemoth. And I had my own room for the first time. And this is in -- in Liberia. But I was too afraid to sleep by myself at night, so my parents went to the native Liberians -- this was a common practice in Liberia, which had a very two- class, hierarchical type of structure, class structure, and they found me a sister. They adopted her, and we were raised together as sisters, even though we always sort of knew we were different.
And in 1980, when there was a military coup in Liberia that upended 150 years of rule by the elite descendants of the freed slaves that founded the country -- freed American slaves that founded the country -- my family ran away, and we left my sister behind.
So "The House at Sugar Beach" is a story of how we were brought up together, how we were separated by this military coup, how I distanced myself for 23 years, remaking myself into American, and putting all of my Africanness sort of aside as I tried to deal with what was happening in Liberia, and my eventual breakdown and decision in 2003 to go back and to try to find my sister.
It was incredible, because I came as a different person. And after sort of abandoning her through so many years, here I am again, you know, I'm back, and you know, I still love you, and I want you to accept me back into your life.
And that's a lot to ask, you know, that's a lot to ask of somebody.
It was incredibly emotional. It was probably the singular most important thing that I've ever done, and I'm really glad I did it.
While I was talking to some Liberian students in Minneapolis last week, and they kept standing up, saying, "thank you for doing this. Thank you for writing this." And I can't begin to describe for you how good that felt. I felt like finally, I'd done something. You know, not for my country, but that I abandoned my country for so long, and I was finally doing something that I should have done a long time ago.
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SESAY: Cooper says she felt driven to find her foster sister and write the book after experiencing a brush with death while covering the war in Iraq. Starbucks coffee shops recently selected The House at Sugar Beach" for its book program. It's available at Starbucks locations around the United States.
Before we go, we have this note about an issue we follow closely on INSIDE AFRICA -- good governance. Botswana's former president, Festus Mogae, had been named this year's winner of the $5 million Mo Ibrahim prize for African leadership. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan chairs the selection committee. Annan credits the two-term leader for Botswana's continued stability, growing prosperity, and success in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Annan said he hopes the world will prompt people in other African countries to ask, "why isn't my president winning?"
And there we must leave it. We'll have a brand-new edition of INSIDE AFRICA next week, focusing on the U.S. presidential election and its potential impact on the continent. Check cnn.com/insideafrica for a full list of air times. Thanks for watching.
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