scholarly journals “Walahé!”; “You should have seen it”: Validating the Truth of Wartime Absurdities in Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged

Gragoatá ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (45) ◽  
pp. 24-44
Author(s):  
Cecilia Addei
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
West African ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Folk Wisdom ◽  
Wartime Experience

Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged is a fiction based on the civil wars in the West African countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone as a result of the breakdown of democracy. It employs the point of view of a child narrator, Birahima, a literalist picaro, to narrate wartime atrocities. The novel, mainly a satire, employs the devices of irony and humour that allow Birahima to present his world, which is turned upside down, and morality, reversed, in a way that makes the reader laugh in spite of the horror. The reality of Birahima’s wartime experience, which has left him in a kind of developmental “limbo”, is difficult to believe to be true. However, he makes every effort in his use of language to prove the truthfulness of the absurdity he narrates. This paper considers how the protagonist/narrator Birahima’s entry into war leaves him in an absurd, cyclical limbo while he resorts in frustration to validate his absurd experience through appealing to God, folk wisdom and dictionaries.---Original in English.---DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2018n45a1097.

“Walahé!”; “You should have seen it”: Validating the Truth of Wartime Absurdities in Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged

Gragoatá ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (45) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Cecilia Addei
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
West African ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Ahmadou Kourouma ◽  
Folk Wisdom ◽  
Wartime Experience

Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged is a fiction based on the civil wars in the West African countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone as a result of the breakdown of democracy. It employs the point of view of a child narrator, Birahima, a literalist picaro, to narrate wartime atrocities. The novel, mainly a satire, employs the devices of irony and humour that allow Birahima to present his world, which is turned upside down, and morality, reversed, in a way that makes the reader laugh in spite of the horror. The reality of Birahima’s wartime experience, which has left him in a kind of developmental “limbo”, is difficult to believe to be true. However, he makes every effort in his use of language to prove the truthfulness of the absurdity he narrates. This paper considers how the protagonist/narrator Birahima’s entry into war leaves him in an absurd, cyclical limbo while he resorts in frustration to validate his absurd experience through appealing to God, folk wisdom and dictionaries.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“WALAHÉ!”; “VOCÊ TINHA QUE TER VISTO”: VALIDANDO A VERDADE DOS ABSURDOS DA GUERRA EM ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED, DE AHMADOU KOUROUMAAllah is Not Obliged, de Ahmadou Kourouma, é uma obra de ficção baseada nas guerras civis nos países da África Ocidental Libéria e Serra Leoa resultantes do colapso da democracia. Através do ponto de vista de um narrador infantil, Birahima, um pícaro literalista, a obra narra as atrocidades da guerra. O romance, essencialmente uma sátira, emprega os recursos da ironia e do humor para permitir que Birahima apresente seu mundo deturpado e sua moralidade invertida de uma maneira que faz o leitor rir apesar do horror. É difícil aceitar como verdade a realidade que Birahima vivenciou na guerra, que deixou o seu desenvolvimento em uma espécie de limbo. No entanto, ele se utiliza da linguagem ao máximo para provar a veracidade do absurdo que ele narra. Este artigo considera como a entrada do protagonista / narrador Birahima na guerra o deixa em um limbo cíclico e absurdo, enquanto ele se frustra para validar sua experiência absurda apelando a Deus, à sabedoria popular e aos dicionários.---Artigo em inglês.

English in West Africa

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Gut
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Current Role ◽  
British Colonization

This chapter describes the history, role, and structural properties of English in the West African countries the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, the anglophone part of Cameroon, and the island of Saint Helena. It provides an overview of the historical phases of trading contact, British colonization and missionary activities and describes the current role of English in these multilingual countries. Further, it outlines the commonalities and differences in the vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and syntax of the varieties of English spoken in anglophone West Africa. It shows that Liberian Settler English and Saint Helenian English have distinct phonological and morphosyntactic features compared to the other West African Englishes. While some phonological areal features shared by several West African Englishes can be identified, an areal profile does not seem to exist on the level of morphosyntax.

scholarly journals Macroeconomic convergence in the West African monetary zone: Evidence from rank tests

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 191
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Numapau Gyamfi ◽  
Anokye Mohammed Adam ◽  
Emily Frimpomaa Appiah
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rates ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Score Test ◽  
West African ◽  
Rank Tests ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Nominal Exchange Rates ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Non Parametric

This article examined convergence of inflation and exchange rates in six (6) West African countries that make up the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). A non-parametric rank and score test was employed in the analysis. The results show that inflation and nominal exchange rates of Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone are converging. The findings have practical implications.

The West Africa Committee, London

1967 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Economic Advantage ◽  
West African ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Mutual Economic ◽  
English Speaking

The chief purpose of the West Africa Committee, established in May 1956, is to aid and stimulate the economic development of the English-speaking West African countries—Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia—by firms, companies, and individuals from outside West Africa, to the mutual economic advantage of these countries and of the members of the Committee.

Ebola and care in the front line

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer E Gallagher ◽  
Patric Don-Davis ◽  
Stephen J Challacombe
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Oral Surgery ◽  
West African ◽  
Oral Disease ◽  
Front Line ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
The Public ◽  
Healthcare Needs

We are witnessing the largest outbreak of Ebola in history, with the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea being particularly affected. With a population of six million, Sierra Leone has few resources to manage oral disease, having only two dentists working in the public sector. Routine healthcare needs do not disappear just because of the Ebola crisis. Oral surgery continues to be required and provided. How is Ebola having an impact on colleagues in Sierra Leone working in the midst of the outbreak? And how might it have an impact on us?

Development and Operation of Ebola Diagnostic Laboratories Led By Public Health England in Sierra Leone during the West African Ebola Outbreak 2013-2015

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bailey ◽  
Jane Shallcross ◽  
Christopher H. Logue ◽  
Simon A. Weller ◽  
Liz Evans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West African ◽  
The West

Assessing Bypassed Hydrocarbons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Oifoghe ◽  
Nora Alarcon ◽  
Lucrecia Grigoletto
Keyword(s):  
Continental Shelf ◽  
Reservoir Characterization ◽  
Gamma Ray ◽  
West African ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Present Case Study ◽  
Novel Model

Abstract Hydrocarbons are bypassed in known fields. This is due to reservoir heterogeneities, complex lithology, and limitations of existing technology. This paper seeks to identify the scenarios of bypassed hydrocarbons, and to highlight how advances in reservoir characterization techniques have improved assessment of bypassed hydrocarbons. The present case study is an evaluation well drilled on the continental shelf, off the West African Coastline. The targeted thin-bedded reservoir sands are of Cenomanian age. Some technologies for assessing bypassed hydrocarbon include Gamma Ray Spectralog and Thin Bed Analysis. NMR is important for accurate reservoir characterization of thinly bedded reservoirs. The measured NMR porosity was 15pu, which is 42% of the actual porosity. Using the measured values gave a permeability of 5.3mD as against the actual permeability of 234mD. The novel model presented in this paper increased the porosity by 58% and the permeability by 4315%.

Hypertextuality and the Economic Novel in Zimbabwe

Matatu ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 400-415
Author(s):  
Maurice Taonezvi Vambe
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Hard Copy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Great Ease ◽  
New Type ◽  
Novelistic Form ◽  
Source Of Information

Abstract Recent surges and advances in the popular use of electronic technology such as Internet, email, iPad, iPhone, and touch-screens in Africa have opened up great communicative possibilities among ordinary people whose voices were previously marginalized in traditional elitist media. People far apart geographically and living in different times can communicate rapidly and with great ease. This technological revolution has challenged and broken down boundaries of dependence on television, newspapers, and novels, the traditional forms of communication. It is now possible to upload a novel onto an iPad and read it as one moves from place to place. The burden of carrying hard copies is relieved but not eradicated; in most African countries, including Zimbabwe (the centre of focus in the present article), the creative work of art or hard copy of a novel is still relied upon as source of information. There are creative, experimental innovations in the novel form in Zimbabwe which to some extent can justify one’s speaking of a hypertextual novel. This new type of novel incorporates multiple narratives, and sometimes deliberately uses genres such as the email form as a constitutive narrative style that confirms as well as destabilizes previous assumptions of single coherent stories told from one point of view. Using the concepts of hypertextuality, intertextuality, and Bakhtin’s notions of carnivalesque and heteroglossia in speech and written utterances, this article reconsiders the implications of the presence of ideologies of hypertextuality in one novel from Zimbabwe, Nyaradzo Mtizira’s The Chimurenga Protocol (2008). The article argues that the multiplicity of narratives constitutes the hypertextual dimension of the novelistic form.

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