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    Good Morning Comrades
    Good Morning Comrades
    Good Morning Comrades
    Ebook134 pages2 hours

    Good Morning Comrades

    By Ondjaki and Stephen Henighan

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Luanda, Angola, 1990. Ndalu is a normal twelve-year old boy in an extraordinary time and place. Like his friends, he enjoys laughing at his teachers, avoiding homework and telling tall tales. But Ndalu's teachers are Cuban, his homework assignments include writing essays on the role of the workers and peasants, and the tall tales he and his friends tell are about a criminal gang called Empty Crate which specializes in attacking schools. Ndalu is mystified by the family servant, Comrade Antonio, who thinks that Angola worked better when it was a colony of Portugal, and by his Aunt Dada, who lives in Portugal and doesn't know what a ration card is. In a charming voice that is completely original, Good Morning Comrades tells the story of a group of friends who create a perfect childhood in a revolutionary socialist country fighting a bitter war. But the world is changing around these children, and like all childhood's Ndalu's cannot last. An internationally acclaimed novel, already published in half a dozen countries, Good Morning Comrades is an unforgettable work of fiction by one of Africa's most exciting young writers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBiblioasis
    Release dateMar 15, 2008
    ISBN9781926845692
    Good Morning Comrades
    Author

    Ondjaki

    Ondjaki is the most prominent African writer of Portuguese from the generations born after Portugal’s former colonies achieved independence in 1975. He has written poetry, children's books, short stories, novels, drama and film scripts.

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    • 4/5
      Well written enchanting tale of a young boy growing up during turbulent times in Angola. Captures the youth, fears, and revelations very well.
    • 4/5
      Ndalu, the narrator of this novel, is a schoolboy in Luanda, the capital of Angola, in the spring of 1991, a time in which the country was led by President José Eduardo dos Santos of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), who rode in public in a bulletproof Mercedes surrounded by heavily armed guards, as the country was in civil war against the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi. The MPLA was supported by Cuba and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union, and between 1975 and 1991 400,000 Cubans served as teachers, physicians and soldiers there. UNITA was mainly supported by the United States, especially during President Ronald Reagan's two terms in office, along with the apartheid South African government, as both feared the spread of Marxism to other sub-Saharan countries, including South Africa itself. The MPLA held control of Luanda and the urbanized coastal areas of Angola and were supported by the Mbundu people, whereas UNITA's power was in the north and less populated interior of the country and were favored by the Ovimbundu, Angola's largest ethnic group. Due to the strength of MPLA and the large presence of disciplined Cuban soldiers Luanda at that time was relatively safe especially after 1988, when the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale repelled a South African/UNITA armed invasion, cemented Cuban/MPLA control of the country, and led to the downfall of South African President P.W. Botha. Guerrilla attacks on schools and other establishments was a constant fear, although a questionable reality.The title of this novel refers to the use of the word comrade to formally address nearly everyone in the MPLA controlled territory; Ndalu's favorite visitor at home is Comrade António, and his primary teachers are Comrade Teacher Maria, the wife of Comrade Teacher Ángel, both from Cuba. Ndalu and his schoolmates are in the last few days of their classes, and are good kids although somewhat rebellious and apt to get into mild trouble, even though they love the school and their teachers, although they find them and other Cubans to be somewhat inscrutable and overly idealistic. Through Ndalu's eyes the reader views the everyday life in Angola in the early 1990s, which is marked with frequent mass rallies, socialist holidays, and speeches at school in opposition to imperialism, Ronald Reagan and apartheid, along with the use of ration cards to purchase goods. Most of Ndalu's classmates and their families are relatively well off in comparison to their Cuban teachers, and they sit alongside each other in an ethnic melting pot of Blacks, mixed race mestiços, and white Cubans and Portuguese.At the end of the school year the children are saddened to learn that their teachers would soon return to Cuba, leaving their future education in charge of native Angolans. Soon they would learn that a peace agreement between MPLA and UNITA had been reached, and Cuba withdrew its presence from the country. What they could not foresee is that the presidential election held the following year kept President dos Santos and MPLA in power, and led to a vicious resurgence of the Angolan Civil War after Jonas Savimbi and UNITA, who were assured that they would win the election, lost instead.'Good Morning Comrades' is a valuable insight into Angola during the end of the Cold War, and what appeared to be the end of the Angolan Civil War, which is mainly drawn from the Ondjaki's own childhood in Luanda. The afterword by the book's translator, Stephen Henighan, provides valuable context to the novel, which is essential for those unfamiliar with the country's history, and his comments bumped my rating of the book from 3½ to 4 stars.

    Book preview

    Good Morning Comrades - Ondjaki

    I

    "You, nostalgic sadness, make the past live again

    You reignite extinct happiness."

    —Óscar Ribas, Culturando as Musas

    But Comrade António, don’t you prefer to live in a free country?

    I liked to ask this question when I came into the kitchen. I’d open the refrigerator and take out the water bottle. Before I could reach for a glass, Comrade António was passing me one. His hands left greasy prints on the sides, but I didn’t have the courage to refuse this gesture. I filled the glass, drank one swallow, two, and waited for his reply.

    Comrade António breathed. Then he turned off the tap. He cleaned his hands, busied himself with the stove. Then he said: Son, in the white man’s time things weren’t like this. . . .

    He smiled. I really wanted to understand that smile. I’d heard incredible stories of bad treatment, bad living conditions, miserable wages and all the rest. But Comrade António liked this sentence in support of the Portuguese and gave me a mysterious smile.

    António, didn’t you work for a Portuguese man?

    Yes. He smiled. He was a Mr. Manager, a good boss, treated me real good . . .

    Was that in Bié Province?

    No. Right here in Luanda. I been here a long time, son. . . . Even way back before you were born, son.

    Sitting at the table, I waited for him to say something more. Comrade António was doing the kitchen chores. He was smiling, but he remained silent. Every day he had the same smell. Even when he’d bathed; he always seemed to have those kitchen smells. He took the water bottle, filled it with boiled water and put it back in the fridge.

    But, António, I still want more water . . .

    No, son, that’s enough, he said. Otherwise there won’t be any cold water for lunch and your mother will be upset.

    When he was putting away the water bottle and cleaning the counter, Comrade António wanted to do his work without me there. I got in his way as he moved around the kitchen, besides which that space belonged to him alone. He didn’t like having people around.

    But António. . . . Don’t you think that everybody should be in charge of their own country? What were the Portuguese doing here?

    Hey, son! Back then the city was clean. . . . It had everything you needed, nothing was missing.

    But, António, don’t you see that it didn’t have everything? People didn’t earn a fair wage. Black people couldn’t be managers, for example. . . .

    But there was always bread in the store, son. The buses worked perfectly. He was just smiling.

    But nobody was free, António. . . . Don’t you see that?

    Nobody was free like what? Sure they were free, they could walk down the street and everything . . .

    That’s not what I mean, António. I got up from my seat. It wasn’t Angolans who were running the country, it was the Portuguese . . . It can’t be that way.

    Comrade António was just laughing.

    He smiled at my words, and seeing me getting worked up, he said: What a kid! Then he opened the door to the yard, sought out Comrade João, the driver, with his eyes and told him: This kid’s terrible! Comrade João smiled, sitting in the shade of the mango tree.

    Comrade João was the ministry driver. Since my father worked in the ministry, he also drove the family. Sometimes I took advantage of the lift and got a ride to school with him. He was thin and drank a lot. Once in a while he showed up very early in the morning, already drunk, and nobody wanted to ride with him. Comrade António said that he was used to it, but I was afraid. One day he gave me a ride to school and we started to talk.

    João, did you like it when the Portuguese were here?

    Like what, son?

    You know, before independence they were the ones who were in charge here. Did you like that time?

    People say the country was different. . . . I don’t know. . . .

    Of course it was different, João, but it’s different today, too. The comrade president is Angolan, it’s Angolans who look after the country, not the Portuguese . . .

    That’s the way it is, son . . . João liked to laugh too, and afterwards he whistled.

    Did you work with Portuguese people, João?

    Yes, but I was very young . . . And I was in the bush with the guerrillas as well. . . .

    Comrade António likes to say really great things about the Portuguese, I said to provoke him.

    Comrade António is older, João said. I didn’t understand what he meant.

    As we passed some very ugly buildings, I waved to a comrade teacher. João asked me who she was, and I replied: It’s Teacher María, that’s the complex where the Cuban teachers live.

    He dropped me at the school. My classmates were all laughing because I’d got a lift to school. We gave anybody who got a ride a hard time, so I knew they were going to make fun of me. But that wasn’t all they were laughing about.

    What is it? I asked. Murtala was talking about something that had happened the previous afternoon, with Teacher María. Teacher María, the wife of Comrade Teacher Ángel?

    Yes, that one, Helder said, laughing. Then this morning, over in the classroom, everybody was making a lot of noise and she tried to give a detention point to Célio and Cláudio . . . Oh! . . . They got up in a hurry to take off and the teacher said. . . . Helder was laughing so hard he couldn’t go on. He was all red. The teacher said: ‘You get down here,’ or ‘there’ or something!

    Yeah, and after that? I was starting to laugh too, it was contagious.

    They threw themselves right down on the floor.

    We all burst out laughing. Bruno and I liked to joke with the Cuban teachers as well. Since at times they didn’t understand Portuguese very well, we took advantage by speaking quickly or talking nonsense.

    But you still don’t know the best part. Murtala came up to my side.

    What’s that?

    She started crying and took off home! Murtala started laughing flat out as well. She split just because of that.

    We had math class with Teacher Ángel. When he came in he was upset. I signalled to Murtala, but we couldn’t laugh. Before the class started the comrade teacher said that his wife was very sad because the pupils had been undisciplined, and that a country undergoing reconstruction needed a lot of discipline. He also talked about Comrade Che Guevara, he talked about discipline and about how we had to behave well so that things would go well in our country. As it happened, nobody complained about Célio or Cláudio, otherwise, with this business of the revolution they’d have got a detention point.

    At recess Petra went to tell Cláudio that they should apologize to Comrade Teacher María because she was really cool, she was Cuban and she was in Angola to help us. But Cláudio didn’t want to hear what Petra was saying, and he told her that he’d just followed the teacher’s orders, that she’d told them to get down here, and so they threw themselves on the floor.

    We liked Teacher Ángel. He was very simple, very humorous. The first day of class he saw Cláudio with a watch on his wrist and asked him if the watch belonged to him. Cláudio laughed and said yes. The Comrade Teacher said in Spanish, Look, I’ve been working for many years and I still don’t have one, and we were really surprised because almost everybody in our year had a watch. The physics teacher was also surprised when he saw so many calculators in the classroom.

    But it wasn’t just Teacher Ángel and Teacher María. We liked all the Cuban teachers, because with them classes started to be different. The teachers chose two monitors to help with discipline, which we liked at first because it was a sort of secondary responsibility (after that of class delegate), but later we didn’t like it very much because to be a monitor "it was essential to help the less capable compañeros," as the comrade teachers said to us in Spanish, and you had to know everything about that subject and you couldn’t get less than an A. But the worst part of all was that you had to do homework, because the monitor was the one who checked homework at the beginning of the class.

    Of course going to the teacher to tell who had done their homework and who hadn’t sometimes led to fights at recess. Paulo could tell you how he got taken away to hospital with a bloody nose.

    At the end of the day the comrade principal came to talk to us. We liked it when someone came into the classroom because we had to pay attention and do that little song that most of us took advantage of to shout: Good afternooooon. . . . comraaaaade. . . . principaaaaal!

    Then she told us that we would have a surprise visit from the comrade inspector of the Ministry of Education. She knew it was going to be some day soon and we had to behave well, clean the school, the classroom, the desks, come to school looking presentable (I think that’s what she said), and the teachers would explain the rest later.

    Nobody said anything, we didn’t even ask a question. Of course we only stood up when the comrade principal said, All right, until tomorrow, and that until tomorrow wasn’t so offhand because it would be different if she said, Until next week.

    So we stood up and said really loudly: Untiiiiiiil . . . tomorrooooow . . . comraaaaade . . . . principaaaaal!

    and then I saw that, in a country, the government’s one thing and the people are another.

    If, when I woke up, I remembered the pleasure of an early morning breakfast, I’d wake up in a good mood. Having breakfast early in Luanda – oh yeah! There’s a freshness in the air that’s almost cold and makes you feel like drinking milk with your coffee and lying in wait for the smell of the morning. Sometimes even when my parents were at the table, we were silent. Maybe we were smelling the morning, I don’t know, I don’t know.

    Comrade António had keys to the house, but sometimes I was on the balcony and I’d see him sitting

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