I have always found it hard to worry about what race someone is. In my universe there are the people who get kicked around a lot and who are trying to make a space for themselves in the world. And there are the bastards with guns and power who are doing the kicking. Most of the sensitive, good people I know have found themselves a little island where they can avoid the attention of such bastards.
Q. You've included some potentially "disturbing" elements in A Girl Named Disaster-the idea that Nhamo might be possessed or might be a witch. First of all, what sort of mindset did you have to create for yourself (as a Westerner) in order to write this story? Second, how has the American/British public (adults and children) perceived this element of the story?
I didn't have to create a mindset to think of Nhamo being possessed by a witch. What Africans call possession is what we call being overcome by subconscious impulses. The witch Long Teats is Nhamo's buried rage. Nhamo needs that rage to survive, but because it is uncontrolled and unfocused it becomes dangerous to her. Hence, the exorcism. I have seen people possessed by spirits. It's a genuine physical and psychological state. I have a nephew here in the U.S. who has waking dreams where he meets angels and holy men. I don't think he's crazy. I think the American, and to a lesser extent the British, public simply don't understand this aspect of the book. It makes them extremely uneasy, especially since I take it seriously.
Q.You lived on Lake Cabora Bassa yourself for several years, and, as part of your job, had to travel around the lake by boat for a few weeks every year. How many experiences in this book are similar to ones you had? This region must have been very dangerous during the years you lived there, as civil war raged around you. Can you share some of the experiences you had that found their way into this book?
Most of the incidents in the book are based on real experiences. This is the most autobiographical story I've written. The cholera epidemic, Rumpy the baboon and his troop, getting groomed by a baby baboon, hiding in a tree from a leopard, living off a leopard kill-all these things happened. It would take too long to list everything. I found the leopard kill on Nhamo's Island when we had been eating nothing but fish for weeks. It was a dead kudu that was too heavy for the cat to drag up into a tree. We (the camp cook and I) looked around very carefully before cutting off one of the legs. I remember lifting the leg-which was extremely heavy-over the water to our canoe, to get the heck out of there before the leopard came back. It was a beach of black sand, volcanic, and the water was transparent. As we carried the leg, blood dripped off into the lake and tiger fish, predators with long teeth, leaped out of the water and snapped at the drops. That's an image you don't forget quickly.
