QUEBECK, CANADA – The more willing you are to suspend disbelief, the more you will enjoy the improbable, but funny situation laid out in Operation Rimbaud, the latest novel by Jacques Godbout to appear in English translation.
The Quebec literary giant takes us to Ethiopia, a country he once briefly called home. It’s the late 1960s, and the emperor, HaileSelassie, turns to the Church of Rome for help transporting a holy relic: the Ten Commandments as engraved on stone by Moses.
This premise doesn’t seem entirely plausible: Even if one can buy the idea that such a secret treasure might exist, it’s difficult to imagine the Orthodox king assigning its care to a rival church. But how important is plausibility in an adventure story, especially a satire? If we accept that Godbout’s main goal is to poke fun at the religious establishment, then we can deem this book successful.
The man charged with saving the stones is Michel Larochelle, a young Jesuit from Montreal. Not long after arriving in the Ethiopian capital, he is roped by a superior into taking confession from his brothers at the local college. He later shows his lack of compassion and reverence by secretly nicknaming one of the men “the masturbator.” Never one to respect his vows, Michel’s mission to preserve “the Tablets of the Law that govern Occidental morality” finds him breaking more than one commandment.
It has been suggested that in addition to this kind of irony, there is another, more private humour to Operation Rimbaud, that it might be Godbout’s sweet revenge on the Jesuits who taught him in his youth here in Montreal.
I’d call this a tongue-in-cheek Da Vinci Code, but that wouldn’t be fair to Quebecer Godbout. Operation Rimbaud came out in its French original in 1999, a good four years before that other religious thriller.
Operation Rimbaud
By Jacques Godbout
Translated by Patricia Claxton
Cormorant Books, 161 pages, $21
Jacques Godbout will be at the Salon du livre in Place Bonaventure to sign his newly published book in French, Autos biographie, at Stand 482, Friday from 5 to 6 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 22, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 23, from 4 to 5 p.m.
PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA – A runner in the Algoa Bus Bay to Bay Challenge was stabbed and robbed in full view of horrified runners and spectators in Port Elizabeth‘s notorious Victoria Drive at the weekend.
Theresa Matthysen, 41, from Despatch, was stabbed three times in the back and robbed of her shoes and watch by two men while running the last leg of the 50km relay event on Saturday.
The attack on a stretch of a Walmer road in which numerous motorists have been stoned, has shocked race organisers, who now plan to change the route of the event next year.
“There was about 8km left of the race near the Walmer Township when I saw two guys coming towards me,” said Matthysen from St George‘s Hospital yesterday. “I tried to avoid them, but the one guy just grabbed me by the neck and I felt a funny feeling on my back.
“They dragged me off to the side of the road and grabbed my takkies, and the one struggled to get my watch off, so I helped him.”
Matthysen, who had just been passed the baton, said she was about 0,7km into the last leg of the relay race when the attack took place.
“It happened so fast. I thought they just punched me on my back. I only realised I was stabbed when two guys who saw it happening came to help me,” she said.
The two men who witnessed the incident alerted the organisers and called for an ambulance.
“I just heard them say: ‘Oh my goodness she‘s been stabbed; call an ambulance‘,” said Matthysen, who was rushed to hospital.
Her husband, Johan, and son, Ryno, were still in shock last night.
Johan said he was about 800 metres away from his wife when she was attacked.
“She was just given the relay baton and I was driving closer to where she was running when I got a phone call to say she had been stabbed,” said Johan. “I was so angry, but we just tried to make sure my wife was helped first.”
Matthysen is nursing serious damage to the left side of her vertebrae caused by the stab wounds on the left side of her back.
“She doesn‘t have full control of her left leg and will have to undergo physiotherapy,” added Johan.
Matthysen said her leg was still numb, but she knows she will be able to walk again.
“I don‘t know if I‘ll run anytime soon, but I believe my leg will get better,” she said.
One of the event‘s organisers, Michael Zoetmulder, said the attack took place near the Animal Welfare Society in Victoria Drive.
“We will change the route next year and use Mount Pleasant to avoid using that road,” said Zoetmulder.
“We wanted to bring the race closer to the people, but if this is what happens, we will have to change it.”
Roy Heine, chairman of the Charlo Athletics Club and race convener of the Bay to Bay committee, said he was “horrified and disgusted” by what had happened.
“It just spoils the fun of athletics. We were trying to bring sports closer to young people in previously disadvantaged areas, yet this is what happens,” said Heine.
“We are all absolutely shattered by it and will definitely change the route next year.”
There have been no arrests.
Matthysen has run in a number of competitive races, including last year‘s Bay to Bay Challenge and the Cape Peninsula‘s Two Oceans Marathon in 2004. She was also a regular participant in the popular Great Train Race that is the forerunner of the Bay to Bay Challenge.
“She‘s a dedicated runner and recently took part in the Kowie 27 in Port Alfred,” said Johan.
The Bay to Bay Challenge, from Jeffrey‘s Bay to Port Elizabeth, includes a 100km walk, a 100km ultra-marathon, a 50km marathon and the new 50km six-person relay.
The relay race started near Van Stadens, while the 100km run and 100km walk started in Jeffreys Bay.
The discovery in Ethiopia of a million-year-old female pelvis is forcing scientists to rethink what they thought they knew about the offspring, appearance and lifestyle of the earliest ancestors of modern humans.
The remarkably complete fossil’s shape indicates that females of the tool-using, wide-ranging Homo erectus species were able to give birth to babies with significantly larger brains than previously thought.
The pelvis’ features also raise questions about the prevailing idea that Homo erectus was specially adapted for long-distance running and hot climates.
“This [pelvis] clearly has to be a specimen to be reckoned with in terms of all future analyses,” said Case Western Reserve University paleontologist Scott Simpson, leader of the team that found the fossil and senior author of a paper today in Science announcing the find.
Simpson and his colleagues were scouring a chocolate-colored hillside in the wastelands of Ethiopia’s Gona region in 2001 when a tribesman helping with the expedition found a broken fragment of a human pelvis.
Paleontologists consider the pelvis important because its size and shape provide critical information about our ancestors — their body style, how well they moved on two legs and, if female, the size of the birth canal.
A quick search of the Gona site failed to turn up additional pieces. Political unrest in Ethiopia prevented the team from returning in 2002.
In 2003 the team uncovered pieces that constituted most of the rest of the pelvis.
Simpson and his co-authors determined that the fossil is between 900,000 and 1.4 million years old, and belongs to Homo erectus, the species that began the transition from the more primitive, chimplike australopiths to our own lineage. Homo erectus was starting to expand its brain and was the inventor of stone hand axes, and the first to travel widely outside of Africa.
Pelvis samples from this murky but crucial period of evolution are extraordinarily rare. Much of what scientists have concluded about Homo erectus’ body shape and characteristics is based on a 1.5 million-year-old skeleton from Kenya.
That specimen, nicknamed Turkana Boy, was a 12-year-old youth. The skull indicated he had a large brain, and limb bones showed he was humanlike in many ways and on his way to an adult height of 6 feet.
Although Turkana Boy was a juvenile male, some researchers used its narrow pelvis measurements and known relationships between male and female pelvis sizes to suggest that Homo erectus females were physically unable to deliver babies with brains the size of modern human infants.
That meant small-brained Homo erectus offspring must have been helpless for a time after birth, requiring substantial energy and care from their mothers or other elders to survive until their brains matured — a pattern similar to modern humans.
Some scientists also inferred from Turkana Boy’s long, thin torso that Homo erectus was evolved to efficiently shed body heat. That made sense considering the narrow hips and other features that suggested Homo erectus was capable of “endurance” running.
The ability to run down prey in the hot African grasslands would have given Homo erectus access to a diet that could support rapid brain enlargement, as well as explaining other physical changes.
But the new Gona pelvis seems to conflict with those conclusions.
Measurements show the capacity of the Gona pelvis is comparable to that of women today. It could accommodate a baby with a brain 30 percent larger than predictions based on the Turkana Boy pelvis. That implies Homo erectus grew much of its brain before birth, like modern infants do, but that its post-natal brain development rate fell somewhere between chimps and humans.
A bigger-brained baby would require less care than had been expected for Homo erectus.
“That doesn’t mean it popped out talking,” Simpson said, “but the period of postnatal development was probably reduced.”
Judging by the Gona pelvis’ dimensions, its owner was a stout, short (less than 5 feet) woman with wide hips. “It’s not a pelvis adapted for running or hot weather,” Simpson said.
He and his co-authors conclude that the main evolutionary force driving Homo erectus’ pelvic shape was the need to deliver big-brained babies, not endurance running or heat adaptation, which may have happened later.
Both Alan Walker, the co-discoverer of the Turkana Boy fossil, and Harvard anthropologist Dan Lieberman, a proponent of the endurance running hypothesis, say it’s possible the Gona pelvis belongs to a more primitive species of human ancestor, Australopithecus boisei.
If the Gona pelvis really is from Homo erectus, Lieberman said, why would females not have the heat-shedding and running adaptations present in Turkana Boy and other erectus specimens?
Simpson said the presence of hand axes used by Homo erectus make a strong case that the fossil is properly classified. Only more fossils will answer the criticism, and he’s returning to Ethiopia this weekend to look.
(To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: [email protected], 216-999-4842)
RANDOLPH TOWNSHIP, NEW JERSEY – Paul Michael Designs, 477 Route 10 East, will hold a holiday open house fundraiser to benefit Ethiopian orphans from 5 – 9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13.
The event will feature jewelry made by the children of the Orphans and Vulnerable Children Program of the Medhan Social Center in Addis Ababa.
Sale proceeds will be donated to the program through the township-based Medhen Orphan Relieef Effort (MORE).
Founded eight years ago, the non-profit organization has raised over $100,000 for the program. For more information, call (973) 989-3993.
LUSAKA, ZAMBIA (Reuters) – Zambia’s new president fired the finance minister on Friday and the opposition leader challenged election results, ushering in a period of political and economic uncertainty for Africa’s top copper producer.
Finance Minister Ng’andu Magande competed for the leadership of the ruling Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) to contend October’s election and is credited with helping turn Zambia into one of Africa’s most stable and economically successful countries.
Zambian opposition leader Michael Sata launched a court challenge to demand a recount of the vote in the election when Rupiah Banda took over from President Levy Mwanawasa.
Sata, who portrays himself as a champion of the poor, lost the Oct. 30 poll to Banda. He branded the election a fraud.
“I know that (my colleagues) are currently in court filing a petition. I am now working on some more documents which we will submit to the court next week,” Winter Kabimba, lawyer for Sata’s Patriotic Front party, told Reuters.
“We are actually going for a vote recount which must be done by way of a petition.”
A prolonged election dispute and anti-government riots could unsettle investors in the southern African country. Foreign investors may also become concerned if it emerges that Magande’s dismissal is part of a wider political struggle.
Benefiting from higher copper prices and Chinese investment, Zambia had been held up as one of Africa’s most appealing buys but the global market crash has seen an exodus of foreign funds that has hit both the currency and shares.
Banda reshuffled the cabinet and vowed to continue with Mwanawasa’s conservative policies, which won praise from Western donors, but would not give reasons why he removed Magande. He was replaced by Stumbeko Musokotwane, who served as Mwanawasa and Banda’s economic adviser.
“I will continue with policies to attract more investments in mining, tourism and agriculture,” Banda told a news conference.
Mines minister Kalombo Mwansa was moved to the home affairs ministry.
RIOTS
Razia Khan, regional head of research Africa at Standard Chartered Bank, said it was too early to tell how Zambian markets would react to Magande’s departure.
“The Zambian market has largely been at the mercy of what has been happening internationally,” he said.
The new finance minister will face the challenge of dealing with the global financial squeeze as he tries to reassure foreign investors.
Sata, meanwhile, is likely to keep up pressure on Banda’s government through protests. But analysts say his campaign is unlikely to lead to the kind of instability ravaging neighbouring Zimbabwe and Democratic Republic of Congo.
Zambian police arrested 38 people on Thursday after violent protests over the arrest of a priest and radio presenter in the country’s second-biggest city, Kitwe, a police spokesman said.
Rioters attacked a police station, caused damage at a milling company, barricaded streets and set cars alight in Kitwe, 350 km (219 miles) north of Lusaka.
Police said the arrest of Frank Bwalya, a priest and manager of Catholic-run Radio Icengelo, which has been critical of Banda’s government, sparked the riots.
A police official said a permit for PF supporters for a protest scheduled for Saturday was cancelled.
Mwanawasa died from a stroke in August, two years into his second five-year presidential term.
(Additional reporting by Peter Apps in London; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Louise Ireland)
LAGOS (Reuters) – China’s Shenzhen Energy Group plans to build a 3,000 megawatts (MW) power plant in a joint venture with Nigeria’s First Bank FBNP.LG at an estimated cost of $2.4 billion, the financial institution said on Friday.
Shenzhen signed a preliminary agreement last month with First Bank as project financiers and advisers for the gas-powered plant, Nigeria’s most profitable bank said.
The Chinese firm had already applied for a licence from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the bank said in a statement, without giving a timeframe for completion.
When finished, the plant should significantly improve Nigeria’s generation capacity and help provide relief to the country’s power crisis, considered one of the main brakes on economic development in Africa’s top oil producer.
Nigeria, the world’s eighth biggest oil exporter, has the capacity for around 3,500 MW, but power generation often plunges below 1,000 MW, largely due to poor maintenance of its aged power stations, corruption and mismanagement.
The problems have become so severe that much of Africa’s most populous nation goes without mains electricity for weeks, throwing those without private generators into darkness and heightening frustration among its 140 million people.
President Umaru Yar’Adua, who took office in May 2007, has promised repeatedly to declare a state of emergency over the crisis. As yet, no such emergency has been declared.
The federal government has said it will spend $5.37 billion of its windfall oil savings to develop the dilapidated power sector over the next few years. Approval to spend was given last month by the 36 state governments, joint owners of the account.
Yar’Adua’s predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, set a series of targets for increased power generation and said his government invested billions of dollars, but there was no tangible improvement.
Efforts to revamp the sector over the years through the promotion of independent power plants have attracted little foreign interest, with potential investors saying the government has not completed its deregulation started in 2005 with the setting up of the NERC.
Prospective investors also said the sector was poorly run and that low tariffs made their investments unviable.
