The Famished Road

The encroachment of technological progress and its intrusion into the natural world, along with its disruption of traditional ways of life, becomes one of the central tensions of the novel. The need for development—modern plumbing, electricity, adequate roads for transportation—is clear, yet there is a deep and legitimate concern that the price to be paid for such “progress” is, ultimately, too steep. Lives are lost, natural resources are destroyed, and cultural heritage is eroded. In addition, the local people are all too aware of the damage that has been inflicted during the many years of colonialism; their land has been exploited, in some cases ruined, and its people oppressed, impoverished, and starved—for the nourishment of the body, the mind, and the spirit. Many of Azaro’s wanderings, not to mention Dad’s dreams and Madame Koto’s achievements, reveal the precarious balance between modernity’s demands and nature’s delicacy, and the need for cultural preservation.

Early in the book, Dad points out this problematic tension to Azaro:

‘Do you see all this?’ Dad said, waving his good arm to indicate the forest and the bushes. [...] ‘But sooner than you think there won’t be one tree standing. There will be no forest left at all. And there will be wretched houses all over the place. This is where the poor people will live.’ (34)

Having lived through the colonial occupation, Dad is all too aware of the inequitable pattern of modern development. Not only do the local people lose their natural resources, but they also lose the richness of their lives, culturally speaking; The community is broken apart and shunted into Western-style, single-family dwellings—poorly built and easily destroyed. Instead, Dad values the beauty and tenacity of the natural world. Pointing to flower buds improbably blooming on an electrical pole, Dad tells Azaro, “This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down” (38). The buds speak to another recurring pattern within the novel: Nature conquers human development almost every time.

When Azaro first stumbles across the men working on the electrical grid, he sees “a world I had no idea existed before. The forest there had been conquered. There were stumps of trees, bleeding sap, all around” (277). The forest, personified, has been vanquished like warriors on a field of battle; the individual trees are “bleeding,” dying. In its place, Azaro witnesses “[w]orkers in yellow helmets mill[ing] up and down the place. There were wooden poles jutting from the earth and wires were stretched in the air and trailed in cables on the ground” (277). The scene is symbolized by the apparent foreman of the crew, a “white man” for whom Azaro “conceived a terrible dislike,” as he gives “bad-tempered orders” (278) to the local workers. It replicates the colonial system, with the “white man” lording over his African charges. However, just a few pages later, a storm descends on the scene with the onset of the rainy season; the equipment is ruined, and the “wooden poles were burnt” (288). Azaro sees that the “white man’s” development is no match for the weather—nor is the “white man” himself:

Floodwaters from the forest poured underneath us. [...] The white man shouted, his binoculars flew into the air, and I saw him slide away from view. He slid down slowly into the pit, as a stream of water washed him away. […] his body was not found (288).

Some of the workers volunteer to try to find him, but they lose their lives, as well: “The pit that had helped create the road had swallowed all of them” (288). The irony here is that the development of the road, which allows for the movement of equipment necessary to bring electricity to the area, ultimately leads to destruction and death—a hallmark of colonial ineptitude, poor planning, and ignorance of local geography and climatology.

Likewise, Madam Koto’s car symbolizes technological progress and impending destruction—a way of life is being usurped. While the villagers surround the car, watching in awe as it gets washed and buffed, the herbalist blesses it—before doing an abrupt about-face and cursing it: “This car will be a coffin!” (381) he shouts, and it is clear that he is mourning for a dying culture. He signifies the traditional African ways that are being eroded by technological progress and divisive political campaigns. He laments this demise: “Too many roads! Things are CHANGING TOO FAST! No new WILL. COWARDICE everywhere! SELFISHNESS is EATING UP the WORLD. THEY ARE DESTROYING AFRICA” (382). In the end, the car, too, is destroyed, driven into a ditch by Madame Koto’s panicked (and drunken) driver.

Dad’s dream-visions at the novel's end offer a pessimistic assessment of Azaro’s African future and a hopeful corrective that might come to pass. First, Dad “saw our people always preyed upon by other powers, manipulated by the Western world, our history and achievements rigged out of existence” (492). Azaro also realizes that Madame Koto’s role is to sow division, with her politically corrupt connections and her lust for money and power: “The Party of the Rich”—Madame Koto’s party—“drew support from the spirits of the Western world. At night, over our dreams, pacts were made, contracts drawn up [...], and our futures were mortgaged, our destinies delayed” (495). Yet, when Dad awakes from his long sleep, he exhorts his wife and his son to see the situation from a different perspective: “When you look around and you see empty spaces, beware. In those spaces are cities, invisible civilisations, future histories, everything is HERE. We must look at the world with new eyes” (498). Within that new vision, there exists an Africa not yet dreamt into being, a world in which the people determine their own destinies and “progress” both respects nature and honors culture.