Guinea-Bissau

In the quote from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do ___ ____ _______,” you might finish the idea in your own mind, whether you recognize it or not, before the speaker gets the words out of his mouth. If so, it’s because those words or concepts have already been said and now they are repeated in reverse order.

This literary technique is called chiasmus. “Your country” is at the beginning and end of the chiasm. “You” and “what you can do” is at the center of the chiasm. A map of the chiasm keeps the ideas in the same order and marks where the ideas parallel both with letters and with indentation:

A Ask not what your country can do

B For you

B Ask what you can do

A For your country

A chiasm is a persuasive technique. Part of the persuasion is because when you hear it, you think, “That’s right,” because you already thought of it. If you thought of it yourself, of course it’s right.

Scholars have found chiasms in ancient Akkadian and Sumerian texts; Homer’s epics; Hebrew, Christian, Islamic, and Mormon scripture; Shakespeare’s plays; and the poetry of Pope and Wordsworth. When I took a masters in English, I wrote papers on chiasms as the overarching structure of novels by Jane Austin, Ernest Hemingway, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Margaret Atwood, Sandra Cisneros, and others, as well as in Disney movies, short stories and modern poems. So far during this virtual journey around the world, I have found two more novels formed as chiasms: Snow by Orhan Pamuk, which we might discuss when we get to Turkey, and The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Sila, a novel from Guinea-Bissau.

Here are the most clearly drawn layers of the chiastic form of The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Sila:

A Ndani wanders through Bissau, cursed by the djambakus, not finding what she seeks.

B The white Chief of Post is shown up by a black man, the Régulo

C The Régulo dictates a document to the Teacher on the qualities of a leader

B The white Chief of Post is shown up by a black man, the Teacher

A Ndani wanders through Bissau, cursed by the djambakus, not finding what she seeks.

The book centers on the criteria for and needs of leadership. Even if you hadn’t realized that this is the center of the book, the fact that one paragraph goes for seven pages calls attention to itself as different than the rest.

The Ultimate Tragedy is not the only work from Guinea-Bissau that illustrates the theme of leadership. Women as leaders and Guinea-Bissau’s most famous leader are also covered:

· The Powerful Queens of Orango documents the matriarchy of the Bijagos tribe as the women lead their families, organize work, and hold the wealth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoYd851Veg4

· Amilcar Cabral, one of the most respected leaders of the fight for independence of Guinea-Bissau, is covered in a documentary on Kanopy and by his preserved speeches in Unity and Struggle: https://libcom.org/files/cabral_unity-ilovepdf-compressed.pdf

Two movies from Guinea-Bissau give a glimpse of life since independence.

· Mortu Nega (Those Whom Death Refused) follows those who survived the war in 1974 just to have to deal with a drought and the woundedness of soldiers from the war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNZ_4lczt5A

· The romances and 90s fashion portrayed in Udju Azul Di Yonta (The Blue Eyes of Yonta) don’t hide that even twenty years later the ideals of the war haven’t been accomplished. I watched it on Kanopy and it is also for rent on Vimeo.

If I could plan my perfect day in Guinea-Bissau, I would sit under a cashew tree and spend more time analyzing the chiastic layers of The Ultimate Tragedy while hearing the bright and upbeat music. Here is as close as I can get right now:

· Cashew processing in Guinea-Bissau: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4cDZz1x9No

· Music (I love the bright colors in this one): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v38vNjGzC2M

· A nice long track with more music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zllJYscscYc

When this pandemic is over, a trip to Guinea-Bissau would be an adventure! Take these ideas of what to do https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-guinea-bissau/ and check in with your local travel advisor. Here's my shout out to my favorite travel advisor, Kaitlin Darnell at Laura's Travel in Redlands. May the travel industry survive and thrive - may we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Guinea-Bissau and throughout the world.

Photo Credit: Teseum https://www.flickr.com/photos/teseum/50385570671/