I Do Not Come to You by Chance: My Notes. READ IT BECAUSE: You'll finally get to know that Nigerian Prince! (Nigeria)

I Do Not Come to You by Chance (Nigeria)

READ IT BECAUSE: You'll finally get to know that Nigerian prince who has been emailing you! In her debut novel Nwaubani follows in the footsteps of Adichie (read my review of Americanah here) as she pulls back the curtain on the 419 industry in Nigeria.  For the uninitiated, 419 scams are those oddly written emails that you've probably received before by a Nigerian prince or businessman who has received a multi-million dollar windfall but needs your help to access the funds.  Normally the letter ends with a plea for you to pay a small advance "convenience" or "administrative fee" in order to claim a substantial share of the funds.

With an eye for humor and for heart, Nwaubani crafts a classic tragedy that follows the rise of Kingsley as he ascends a 419 crime syndicate.  The single aspect that best demonstrates the author's deft writing hands is her ability to humanize Kingsley as he becomes more and more adept at swindling gullible mugus.  It's easy to quickly despise 419ers but much harder to explore their (possible) motives in an honest and thoughtful manner.

Kingsley has a key moment of interior monologue about halfway through the book where he runs through a list of all the charitable things his mentor "Cash Daddy" has done with the illicit funds and finally concludes that "no matter what the media proclaimed, we were not villains, and the good people of Eastern Nigeria knew it."  This ends up likely being the point of no return for the narrator.

My favorite part of the novel, however, was how perfectly Nwaubani captures the different voices and dialects of Nigeria.  It's such a fascinating and markedly different style from American writing. Take for instance how she describes a glass shattering on the floor: "The glass cup dropped from my hand and colonized a large portion of the marble floor."  Or when Kingsley spots several egregious typographical errors: "At least nine muscular typographical errors rose from the page and gave me a slap across the face."  Initially, this descriptive flair for the hyperbolic was a bit overwhelming but the more I became invested in the characters the more I began to enjoy her style.

As I finished this fast-paced novel, my only regret is that she hasn't published any other books since her 2010 debut. For now I will have to satisfy myself with the wealth of essays and articles she has written since then.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
**See our 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Other Contemporary Nigerian Writers You Should Read:

I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Last annotated on January 12, 2016

“I think a child should be named for his destiny so that whenever he hears his name, he has an idea of the sort of future that is expected of him. Not according to the circumstances of his birth. The past is constraining but the future has no limits.” He smiled again. “I shall call you Augustina.” Augustina meditated on his words as she walked back inside.  Read more at location 226

Ola was the sugar in my tea. Read more at location 434

Ola was a Laboratory Technology student whose family also lived in Umuahia. She was two years younger than I, enthusiastic about academics and knew exactly where she was headed in life. Her fingernails and toenails were always clean. Her hair never stank, even when she wore braids for over two weeks. She always wore her makeup light and natural and she still had some hair remaining from her eyebrows. Read more at location 485

in our society these days, besides paper qualifications and a high intelligence quotient, you usually needed to have “long-leg.” You needed to know someone, or someone who knew someone, before you could access the most basic things. Read more at location 526

One of the omnipresent hitches with the National Electric Power Authority supply had struck. In keeping with their more popular acronym—Never Expect Power Always—power had been cut. Read more at location 896

But we must never make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances. Read more at location 1078

It was every Igbo man’s dream to own a house in his homeland—a place where he could retire from the hustle and bustle of city life in the twilight of his years; a place where he could host guests for his daughters’ traditional wedding ceremonies; a place where his family could entertain the well-wishers who came to attend his funeral. Read more at location 1098

The nurse handed me a sheet of paper. I studied the handwritten list. The items included a pack of cotton wool, bottle of Izal disinfectant, pack of needles, pack of syringes, roll of plaster, disposable catheter bags, bleach, gloves… “What is this?” I asked. “Those are the things we need for your father’s care,” Read more at location 1227

“We never admit any patient who is not accompanied by relatives.” Read more at location 1234

like many of her compatriots from Edo in the Mid-West region of Nigeria, had a mother tongue–induced speech deficiency that prevented her from putting the required velar emphasis on her X sounds. They always came out sounding like an S. Read more at location 1265

“And he never stopped  Reading; he always had a book in his hands. Truly, I’ve never met a more intelligent man in my life.” Read more at location 2155

“Yes, sit in the owner’s corner,” Eugene and Charity chanted. With a modest smile, my mother went round to the back right of the car, where people who could afford chauffeurs usually sat. Read more at location 2531

You know the Americans are much more difficult.” I nodded. I had heard that the American was the one embassy where no officials agreed to have their palms greased in exchange for visas or for keeping closed eyes about spurious documents. Even booking an interview date with either of their embassies, in Abuja or Lagos, could take several months. Read more at location 2763

knew that we were in the white man’s land. Still, I felt a slight shock at seeing so many white people walking about in one place at the same time. It was extremely rare to see a white person on the streets of the average, small Nigerian town. So rare, in fact, that sometimes in Umuahia, people would stop and stare at a white person, some chanting “Oyibo,” hoping that the white person would turn and wave. Read more at location 2918

How could English people have such bad teeth? Or perhaps these were just immigrants, and not real English people. Read more at location 2927

“white man doesn’t understand black man’s face. Do you know that I can give you my passport to travel with…Even if your nose is ten times bigger than my own, they won’t even notice?” Read more at location 2950

Arriving late, no apologies, it was typical. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a bona fide Nigerian top government official. Read more at location 2984

How could anybody look at Cash Daddy and imagine that his name could ever be anything like Alhaji Mahmud—a name that was more likely to belong to a Hausa person from the northern part of Nigeria? Cash Daddy had the unmistakable thick head and chunky features of the Igbos. Plus, a concrete Igbo accent. It did not matter whether it was a three-letter word or a five-letter word, each came out with its original number of syllables quadrupled, and with so much emphasis on the consonants that it sounded as if he were banging on them with a sledgehammer. The Hausas had more delicate and slender facial features, and the phonetic structure of their mother tongue gave them an accent that sounded almost Western. Read more at location 3030

That was one thing everybody liked about Cash Daddy. He was not a cheat. Unlike some godfathers who reversed tongues when good things came in, Cash Daddy always made sure that each participant in a job received his fair share. In his own special way, my uncle was an honest man. Read more at location 3063

A buja was different from other Nigerian cities. There were no hawkers in the streets, no okadas buzzing about like flies, no overflowing garbage cans with un-clothed schizophrenics scavenging in them for their daily sustenance. None of the roads had potholes and all the traffic lights were working. And unlike in our parts, where a flashy car was the ninth wonder of the world, most of the cars here were sleek, many with tinted windows. Read more at location 3148

a Potemkin village. Mr. Winterbottom would probably never have to cross the River Niger to Igbo land, where poverty and disarray would stare him eyeball to eyeball. Not only was Abuja the Federal Capital Territory and the new seat of government, it was probably the most expensive city in Nigeria. Whenever the masses complained about the astronomical costs of living, the government reminded them that Abuja was not for everyone. Read more at location 3175

Lord Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern protectorates of the British Colony, and bundled them up into one country which Lady Lugard had named “area around the Niger”—Nigeria. Read more at location 3308

Blaming problems on 419ers had turned into a national pastime, but then, it all depended on which part of the elephant you could feel. I knew, for example, that Cash Daddy was personally responsible for the upkeep of the 221 orphans in the Daughters of St. Jacinta Orphanage, Aba. He tarred all the roads in my mother’s local community. He dug boreholes, installed streetlights, built a primary health care center. Just two days ago, I received a letter from the Old Boys’ Association of my secondary school requesting my contribution toward a new classroom block. I replied immediately to say I would fund the whole project. I knew what it felt like to endure classrooms that had no windows, no doors, and no tiles on the floors, just because the complete funds pledged toward the project had not yet been collected. So, no matter what the media proclaimed, we were not villains, and the good people of Eastern Nigeria knew it. Read more at location 3401

Note: This is the first time he defends 419 
The black paint had washed off, leaving gleaming dollar notes behind. Only the first row of notes in the trunk box were real. The rest were old newspapers, painted black and cut to dollar size. Pray tell, who was that 419er who first thought up these serpentine scams? Men and women had received the acknowledgment of History for displaying less ingenuity in other fields. Read more at location 3598

No, this country was not fucked up. It was also not a place for idealizing and auld lang syne. Once you faced the harsh facts and learned to adapt,  Nigeria became the most beautiful place in the world. Read more at location 3726

There were many possible explanations for the atrocious traffic in Lagos—population explosion, insufficient mass transit, tokunbo vehicles going kaput, potholes in the roads, undisciplined drivers, random police checkpoints, and fuel queues. But in Cash Daddy’s opinion, the go-slow started whenever the devil and his wives were on their way to the market. Read more at location 3934

a person bites you on the head without being concerned about your hair, then you can bite him on the buttocks without being concerned about his shit. Is that not so?” Read more at location 4085

In other words, his family were neither osu nor ohu. None of their ancestors had been dedicated as slaves to the pagan gods of any shrine, none of their ancestors had been slaves to other families. And so we nwadiala, freeborn, were not forbidden from marrying amongst them. The first thing my father’s sisters had wanted to know when I told them about Ola was whether or not she was osu. But with Johnny, I had other concerns. Read more at location 4203

Cash Daddy was not in a hurry. He took slow steps toward the couple while one of his otimkpu followed, carrying a small Ghana-must-go bag in one hand. Read more at location 4338

At least nine muscular typographical errors rose from the page and gave me a slap across the face. Read more at location 4482

The glass cup dropped from my hand and colonized a large portion of the marble floor. Read more at location 4804

Really, there was no better legacy a father could bestow on his son than knowledge as vast as eternity. Read more at location 5086

In Nigeria, foreign degrees carried huge respect, whether they were from Manchester or Imperial or Peckham. And now that it seemed as if democracy had indeed come to stay, hordes from the diaspora were shaking off their phobias and coming back home, and people with local degrees were becoming more and more invisible. Read more at location 5100

Praise of Savagery: Read It Because You Want To Learn About An Original Journey (Ethiopia)

In Praise of Savagery (Ethiopia)

READ IT BECAUSE:  You will learn about the incredible journeys that the original European adventurers made as they explored the previously "undiscovered" interior of Africa.  In Praise of Savagery is the memoir of a young man who befriended the great British explorer Wilfred Thesiger (see his books below).  Eventually, Cairns gets the opportunity to essentially retrace Thesiger's original steps when he first set out to find the origin of the Awash River in Ethiopia.  Cairns interweaves his journey with a retelling of Thesiger's own original journey.   It's frankly quite mind-blowing to consider just how brave/reckless one had to be during that time period to do this type of exploration and survive.  If you've ever been curious of Thesiger and adventurers of his ilk this is a great and accessible starter.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
See our 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

RELATED BOOKS:

KINDLE HIGHLIGHTS:
In Praise of Savagery by Warwick Cairns
Last annotated on January 5, 2016

The river flows on and on through the Danakil lands for mile after mile until there rises, in the distance, a line of purple hills known as the Magenta Mountains.  Read more at location 284

The river flows around Aussa on three sides, looking for a way out into the desert land beyond, where at some further point, before reaching the coast at Djibouti, it disappears.  Read more at location 291

the words of the great American modernist Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘If the roof doesn’t leak, the architect hasn’t been creative enough.’ Or, as he put it, rather more bluntly, to clients who had the temerity  Read more at location 329

A waiter appeared and pulled out a chair so that His Highness Asfa Wossen Tafari, Crown Prince of Abyssinia, eldest son of the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings and Elect of God, and direct lineal descendant, it was said, of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, could sit down.  Read more at location 414

The story that Wilfred Thesiger heard of the events at the ruined Adoimara village by the Mullu River on his arrival Afdam Station was, in some ways, a remarkably similar one to the story of the MacDonalds of Glencoe; and yet, at the same time, it was very different indeed, and it revealed much about the culture of the Danakil peoples.  Read more at location 914

But the goat, which the moran led towards us by the horns, had done me no wrong.  Read more at location 1142

I wonder how deep the ancestral ties go. I wonder what it means to arrive, for the first time in your life, in a place where the people all look the way you look.  Read more at location 1247

Your typical pastoralist—your Samburu, your Rendille, your Turkana—he has a thousand hours more free time on his hands than you  Read more at location 1403

The Yanomami of the Amazon, meanwhile, get through their day’s work in even less time: two hours and forty-eight minutes.  Read more at location 1409

We pay dearly for them with our lives and with our freedom.  Read more at location 1425

And for all that, the Asaimara were, as he put it in his diary at the time, ‘A cheerful, happy people despite the incessant killing, and certainly not afflicted by the boredom which weighs so heavily today on our own young urban civilisation.’  Read more at location 1461

But here’s the thing: I had assumed that it was their pleasure so to do, just as it was my pleasure to do otherwise; and that the driving force in all human life, beyond the mere necessity of things, was pleasure. Or, better still, that living, as distinct from merely being alive, was the art of making pleasure out of necessity.  Read more at location 1578

he says, in essence, is that pleasure is the completion or perfection of human life.  Read more at location 1583

But these relentless, sensible, duty-driven people, they unsettle me.  Read more at location 1626

But in that part of the world the sheep and the goats look remarkably similar, to the point of being practically identical, and telling the one from the other was considerably trickier—apart from the sheep, from the back, having slightly fatter, more blubbery tails. But what if you had a scrawny sheep? Or what if you had a goat with a fat backside? Would they still be sheep and goat respectively? Or would they, in fact, become goat and sheep? And how would you know?  Read more at location 1722

While he was gone, Ali explained that the stick the head askari carried was the silver baton of command, which gave the bearer the authority of the Sultan himself,  Read more at location 1763

What they do is they take a water-container—in this case, one of our jerry-cans—and they fill it with water and tie it inside a wet sack. Then they hang it in the hottest place they can find—in a tree in full sunlight, say—and then, when the sack is dry they pour out the water and it is cold, as if it had come from a refrigerator.  Read more at location 1787

Among the Asaimara band, a man was expected to win his bride by organising a game rather like the one that small boys in England know as British Bulldog.  Read more at location 1808

At the ranks of squatting warriors and the small isolated group of my own men, I knew that this moonlight meeting in unknown Africa with a savage potentate who hated Europeans was the realisation of my boyhood dreams. I had come here in search of adventure: the mapping, the collecting of animals and birds were all incidental. The knowledge that somewhere in this neighbourhood three previous expeditions had been exterminated, that we were far beyond any hope of assistance, that even our whereabouts were unknown, I found wholly satisfying.   Read more at location 1970

On the next day they saw, in the distance, the desert’s edge; and beyond it, far off, the blue of the sea. A day later they reached the coast, at Tajura. It was now six full months since the expedition began.   Read more at location 2208

The sort of people, in fact, who at another time might be content to spend their whole lives sorting cheques into account-number order, or else training all hours to be good at a sport that they don’t actually enjoy, because it’s wrong to quit things.   Read more at location 2284

And from there it was not such a big step to the cotton mills. That’s progress for you, though. And that’s civilisation.  Read more at location 2289

There are some that see life as a matter of departures—a process of moving on and leaving behind, of exploration and discovery.  Read more at location 2293

But for him there were more departures still. To Arabia, there to live and travel with the Bedouin. To Iraq, there to spend some seven years, on and off, in the reed longhouses of the Marsh Arabs. And the books he wrote about those years and the photographs he took, and the acclaim that followed. And after, to Kurdistan, to Afghanistan, to the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram, to Morocco. To more fighting, still, on the side of the Royalists and against the communists in the Yemeni civil war. Then four expeditions, through the borderlands of Uganda, the Sudan and Kenya. During which he made a crossing of the deserts of the Northern Frontier District, climbing Mount Kulal and exploring the shores of Lake Turkana.  Read more at location 2307

But do you know how you tell the difference, eh? Between a sheep and a goat? Shall I tell you? Well, if the tail goes up, then it’s a goat. And if it goes down, it’s a sheep. That’s how you tell.  Read more at location 2349

‘Here’s a trick for you,’ he said. ‘It’s something the Bedu taught me. If you have no water, and no prospect of getting any, then you should put a little salt in the palm of your hand, like so, and then you lick it. That will help keep the thirst away.’  Read more at location 2352

In the country where I live there were once wolves in the mountains. There are none there now.   Read more at location 2454

His eyesight, now, had become so bad that his books were of no further use to him, and he gave them all away, so that his flat, once so full of them, now had, instead, row upon row of empty shelves. A short while later he moved from this flat to an old people’s home in Coulsdon in Surrey, run by the Friends of the Elderly, where he was given a room overlooking the lawn. In 2001 he began to be treated for Alzheimer’s as well as Parkinson’s. He began to lose his memory, and the shaking of his hands, which had been kept largely under control through drugs, began to return. He began, also, to dribble. This caused him great distress.  Read more at location 2477


Of someone standing by his bed, he demanded, ‘What is your tribe?’  Read more at location 2504

At another time he cried out, ‘For God’s sake, let me go.’ On Sunday, 24th August 2003, at just after five minutes past four in the afternoon, he died. He was ninety-three years old.  Read more at location 2505

No account of any part of Wilfred Thesiger’s life would be complete without a heartfelt plea to the reader buy, borrow or even steal his two stunningly beautiful master-works, Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs.   Read more at location 2537

But the point is this, I think. The point is this. Wilfred Thesiger was a man who made a difference to the world. And for those of us whose lives he touched, things will never be quite the same again.   Read more at location 2550