Book Review: Thorns and Roses

Title: Thorns and Roses

Author: Edward Aaron Mugabi

Date: 2021

Publisher: E.A. Mugabi

ISBN: 978-9970-757-02-2

Length: 142 e-pages

Quote: “She felt tiredness, faintness, morning sickness and a craving for pumpkins. She was the gladdest woman on earth.”

That was at the beginning of the emotional roller-coaster ride Regina Wotali takes in this book. Happily married, she adored the idea of having a beautiful healthy baby—a daughter, for choice, and as an admitted “mythology geek” she liked the name Olympia. The story begins with her wearily remembering those days after the loss of a fetus that could never have lived. In successive chapters we share her feelings of misery in the hospital, comfort that most of her friends and relatives visit and sympathize with her, envy of other women, resentment that her mother and sister were visiting each other when other people were visiting her (it’s their long-term relationship so it doesn’t need to make sense), indignation, concern about a young relative, forgiveness, the sense of emotional relief that fills the mind with gratitude for little things, more. She keeps reminding herself that life is like that, full of nasty and nice things, thorns and roses.

This is a religious book; it tries to keep its religious content inclusive. Traditionally many African people have been very religious, although many were neither Christians nor Muslims. The people we meet in this book seem to accept each other’s different beliefs. Regina and her husband are Christians. Due to laws that allowed polygamy, Regina has two mothers-in-law, the “co-mothers” of her one and only husband. One of them is a Muslim but has strayed from her faith, not only by marrying a Christian but later by sneaking off to pay a traditional “witch doctor” (Mugabi’s phrase) to help put a curse on Regina. She’s sorry now, when years have passed and she’s become fond of Regina...and has the worse half of the curse descended upon her own daughter Joan, whom Regina takes in when Joan is sent home from school?

The level of Christian content is high. The pastor from Regina’s church visits her along with the relatives and quotes Bible verses to her. Regina remembers other verses for herself and her relatives. Mugabi is a Christian but he’s trying to be fair and polite about the other beliefs in which Ugandan people grow up. Everyone in the book seems to be basically good and honorable, apart from a few adolescent “wacks” who, we’re free to hope, may improve with age. Even the witch doctor advises against hexing people, doesn’t try to keep clients coming back, and urges Hawa, the mother-in-law who cursed Regina, to bless and pray for her. The story ends with a lovely scene of Muslim and Christian reconciliation, with dignified kneeling and blessing.

For many U.S. readers most of what we’ve heard about Uganda has involved their late dictator Idi Amin, with whom some wanted to go to war. So it may be helpful now to add Mugabi’s e-“booklet,” or even more of his teaching stories for Ugandans, to our libraries. Here are pictures of the Ugandan part of Planet Nice. The people are very polite to one another in a charming, African way reminiscent of the novels of Alexander McCall Smith, or the way African exchange students, exchange doctors, and diplomats actually talk when they’re in Washington. People who are not wealthy appreciate books and flowers. Working people travel on business; Regina’s younger sister’s significant other is in China. The harsher tribal traditions are breaking up: traditionally fathers and daughters didn’t talk about intimate details, but Regina’s father visits her because they’re close enough that he knows she sets a high value on courtesy visits. People still say a lot of things in traditional "proverbs."

How much have U.S. readers read or heard about the African proverbs? I’ve seen very little about other cultures’ traditional sayings (these are Lusoga) but I used to have a little book that translated a few dozen Luganda proverbs. Each ethnic group and language had its own set of proverbs. Not to be confused with the biblical book of Proverbs, these are traditional phrases, like the “old sayings” old farmers repeat in the United States. Some may be remembered primarily because they sound good or because a notable historical figure said them, like our “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”—it’s not always true for everyone who’s tried it, but it sounds good and Benjamin Franklin said it. Others are wise and true, and might even be considered to translate isolated Proverbs from the Bible. References to the local environment abound. For several African languages, learning the language requires learning the proverbs of the people who speak it. Traditionally the proverbs were preserved only as oral folklore. Children were rewarded for learning as many as possible. The Africans I met in Washington did not speak to Americans in traditional proverbs. I hope they remembered several, though, and kept them alive at least when they went home. 

Thorns and Roses is a teaching story, and what can I say? I’ve never had a maybe-baby to lose. Grandma Bonnie Peters, who lost one that seemed viable long enough to be identified as a boy, would be better qualified to rate this book, but now we’ve lost her. I would imagine that the flower lore, the sympathetic and adorably formally courteous visitors, and the distracting-healing visit from the troubled teenager would offer hopeful messages to young women mourning the loss of fetuses or babies in the United States too. 

The relationship between Regina and her sister Robina is presented more like a teaching story than in the detail a novel would usually provide. When her mother once again seems to favor Robina over Regina, as an educated Christian Regina turns to the Bible and considers stories of family favoritism and the harm it can do. Parents should try not to have a favorite child, Mugabi says clearly—but it can be hard to help. Robina, six years younger than Regina, apparently left school much earlier to live with a man who didn’t even give her a formal wedding. When he does seem to have given her a baby, oh thrills thrills, Robina and their mother are too busy celebrating that to make the formal courtesy call Regina expects. Mother always liked her youngest best, it’s not faaaair... Here I stand to testify that even a parent who found another child more congenial, when the children were growing up, is subject to the mind-melting influence of grandparenthood when one of the children presents a grandchild. Regina didn't dare tell everyone she thought she was pregnant, so when Robina broke her news, even if their mother had inclined to favor Regina, Robina and her maybe-baby would have driven all other thoughts out of their mother's mind. We know Regina is a better woman than many, and will be a good aunt and a good mother if and when she has a child, because she does still love Robina. 

The status of women in Africa is another point of interest for U.S. readers. This sometimes thorny topic is handled delicately in Thorns and Roses—one of several things that can be compared to handling a living rose. Regina obviously loves, trusts, and admires as well as respecting the men in her life: husband, pastor, and father. Their conversation with her is as courteous as her conversation with them. Whatever political problems women confront in modern Ugandan society seem to have little effect on personal relationships between people of good will.

One chapter of Regina’s story is somewhat mysterious. After she seems to have recovered from whatever went wrong with her pregnancy, Regina goes into a state of mental confusion. Has she been bewitched? Could she go insane? It’s hard to say, but I’d like to stick my neck out and mention that I’ve seen Americans go into that sort of state of consciousness when they had thyroid problems. The thyroid gland regulates our metabolic rate. It also regulates the processes of pregnancy and lactation, so, although either men or women can have thyroid disorders, women are more likely to have them than men are, and they often begin after pregnancy. Typically people with low thyroid metabolic rates are the ones whose thyroid activity can fluctuate, causing truly bizarre behavior that can be terrifying to watch, not because these people become violent but because losing touch with reality is totally out of character for them. They are the calmest, steadiest people you know until one day you find them in a sort of trance, as if they were stuck in between sleeping and waking. A flaw in their thyroid metabolism is causing them to be stuck between sleeping and waking. They might start to go into a dream state and speak or otherwise react to something in the dream, or try to hide in a dark quiet place in hopes of getting into normal sleep but be unable to get there. This condition is temporary. The danger is that these people will be taken to a psychiatrist first, and as the psychiatrist is not trained to recognize their condition they’re likely to get misleading diagnoses and useless or harmful prescriptions. It’s important that they see an endocrinologist rather than a psychiatrist. Nevertheless, some patients recover before the endocrinologist actually makes time to see them, and eventually most even seem to survive the mistakes of psychiatrists.

All the book actually tells us is that Regina behaved strangely for several hours. The emotional vibrations, and even spiritual forces, associated with a formal curse probably contribute something to what even literate people around the world used to perceive as a “bewitched” state of mind affecting a generally sane and sensible person. In some parts of Europe and North America, up into the nineteenth century, these people were regarded as inspired prophets, which led to much confusion; in other places, notably France and England, they were thought to be possessed by evil spirits and beaten “to drive out the devil.” Regina’s family’s reaction is more modern and humane. 

What’s not to like? This book is easy to read (lots of Lusoga vocabulary words, all explained in the text) and easy to like. Something or other about it seems likely to appeal to almost anyone who wants to read a work of fiction, and its instructive benefit may appeal to students and teachers who prefer nonfiction. 

I promised an honest review. Does it need to be brutally honest? Maybe. I think that, as a window on another country, Thorns and Roses has things in common with the nonfiction e-book I read earlier this year, Between the Bear and the Lioness, and with the Tiger trilogy I read some years ago. That these books are being published in the United States is pretty blatantly a bid for the good kind of sympathy in a more “privileged and developed” nation. The appeal in Thorns and Roses is much more pleasant. Instead of “Some of us were some of your friends, once” or “Pray for us in our desperate straits,” it’s more like “See how much nicer our country is than you thought it would be! We have churches! We have mosques! We may still need some financial aid and expert consultants from countries that have been ‘privileged and developed’ through their Christian or Muslim alliances, but that’s all. We’ve made Progress! Soon we’ll be able to give something back to you!”—and I say, Heaven speed the day. This is the third book I’ve read this year that specifically called attention to the progress both of churches and of schools in Uganda. Though it’s reported as a general tendency over time rather than as breaking news, it's the most encouraging news I’ve read all year.