Interview with Veronique Tadjo

By Omotoke Solarin-Sodara and Ayei Ogwo

 

Africa has been plagued with deadly viruses, most recently, the Coronavirus. Why did you choose to write about the Ebola virus?

The original French edition came out in 2017. At the time, no one could have predicted the Coronavirus pandemic. The book was then translated in English and published by Other Press (US) and Hope Road (UK), in 2021 during the health crisis.

The simple answer is that I had never seen anything like Ebola, a disease that could cause so much devastation in such a short time.  I was raised in Abidjan. Côte d’Ivoire shares a border with Guinea in the north, and Liberia in the west, so I became very concerned. The disease was advancing fast. When I visited Abidjan from Johannesburg where I was teaching at the University of Witwatersrand, at the time, strict health restrictions were in place—we couldn’t kiss, we couldn’t hug, we had to wash our hands in chlorine. I was stunned. So when I returned to South Africa, I continued to follow the evolution of the epidemic closely. Maybe that’s something that is common with people ‘in exile’; they worry a lot about what’s happening back at home. Ebola was in the news a lot. At some point, I travelled to the United States and taught a seminar at Rutgers University for about two months and gathered more information while I was there. 

When the epidemic ended in 2016, nobody wanted to talk about it anymore after the intense media scrutiny. It became some sort of a taboo. It puzzled me enormously and I thought no, we need to pause and think about this huge thing that had just happened.  We need to try and work it out at a human level. So that’s when I decided to write the book.

And the more I researched the subject, the more it strengthened my resolve to continue with my project. I learnt that there had been at least ten previous Ebola epidemics that occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo where the virus was first identified in 1976 and that there were different types of Ebola viruses known to be present in Sudan, Uganda, and Côte d’Ivoire, and even in Asia with various degrees of lethality. Even Nigeria, Senegal and Mali had serious scares but were able to successfully contain the disease before it got out of control. But as we speak, there is an ongoing outbreak that was declared on 20 September 2022 which is caused by the Sudan ebolavirus in the Western Region and Central Region of Uganda. It is Uganda’s fifth outbreak.  The problem is not over yet but it only hits the headlines when the number of victims is high or when the disease is in danger of crossing borders.

 

What inspired the book’s title: In the Company of Men?

The title refers to a change of gaze. Animals and nature are in the company of Men. Humans are not above other creatures. The world is not ours alone; we don’t own it. And   we destroy it at our own perils. As the giant Baobab tree says in the book: “But when men murder us, they must know that they are breaking the chains of existence. Animals can no longer find food. Bats can no longer find food; can no longer find the wild fruit they like so much. Then they migrate to villages, where there are mango, guava, papaya, and avocado trees, with their soft, sweet fruits. The bats seek the company of men.”

 

How long did it take you to carry out the research required to complete this book?

I would say from 2014 when the Ebola epidemic became a prime concern, up until the writing of the book.  Being an academic helped me tremendously (in terms of the methodology to adopt) when doing the research because the same skills can be applied to creative writing. When producing an academic article, it is said that you have to withdraw behind “neutrality” and stay on the ‘rational’ path.  On the other hand, when you write creatively, you tend to put the emphasis on emotional knowledge. You are appealing to the readers’ sense of identification with the characters because you want to break the cycle of indifference. To a certain extent, this hybrid form opens up new possibilities.

 

You once said “…To be able to write well, you must be completely honest. But often historical facts take over; the text must apply its own truth. It is not reportage; this is not a university text. It is literature…” Is there a moment where you thought in writing this novel, the facts completely took over?

Yes, sifting through all the data wasn’t easy.  When I finally sat down to write the book, my research intensified because I had to fill in the gaps. But, in a way, I already knew what I was looking for. I still had to do a lot of pruning and pollarding. My intention was not to write an exhaustive work. For instance, I could have added more ‘characters’, but I settled on those that spoke to me most urgently. To that effect, I weaved tales and reality to bring together, “an almost magical yet harshly honest series of stories”, as a critic has said. It was important for me to paint this picture of a disease that had claimed over eleven thousand lives.

 

There is a poetic cadence to your writing style. Were you intentional about introducing poetry into your novel or did it happen organically during the writing process?

I see poetry more as a way of looking at the world. It should be free and out there. Spoken word poetry has taken poetry back where it belongs— in the public sphere and not confined within the pages of collections of poems. Poetry has regained its orality and its combativeness. It can be lyrical yet less of an intimate and sometimes hermetic genre. 

I am drawn to poetic prose as it allows me to write works that use condensed language and strong imagery. Poetry is another means of expression like painting or music.  It urges you to find the most direct route to the jugular.  In this novel , I used a poetic cadence to express sorrow and sadness for those who have passed, and a hymn for those who have survived. 

 

Why did you think it was necessary to tell the effects of the Ebola virus from different perspectives of unnamed characters?

The fight against the Ebola virus was not a linear story. It involved a great number of people and it had complex and multi-layered dimensions. It seemed to me that listening to various voices was an effective way of getting close to a form of ‘truth’. I could not bring myself to focus on one voice only. By rendering the many, including non-humans points of view, I resisted the temptation to assess reality in terms of human knowledge and values alone. It was important to render a form of solidarity as accountability.

I had the storytelling structure of African oral traditions, and a Greek chorus in mind. I was interested in projecting a more holistic view of the world, derived from the acknowledgement of the vulnerability of our existence. 

Humans are dependent on non-humans and vice-versa. Imagination is a means of moving away from the status quo to reassess the predicament we find ourselves in. I have an instinctive suspicion of the linear story. We need to listen more to one another.

Let’s talk about those non-human characters: The Baobab tree, a bat and even the virus itself are all narrators in this novel. The Baobab tree is a central character and you portray it as godlike, almost immortal and as a symbol of healing.

The Baobab tree’s elegy points to The Banality of the Anthropocene, a book in which the author, Heather Anne Swanson, stresses that the most troubling thing about the destruction of the environment “is the sheer number of people it fails to trouble.” She then calls for curiosity as an antidote to “blindness”.

The bat and the virus are also there to provide their opinion about the situation. They draw their conclusions from their observation of how humans behave.  The Baobab tree is the griot, the storyteller, the central figure because he upholds confidence in humanity’s ability to reform itself. He keeps hope afloat. 

 

Do you think the battle to survive overpowers the sadness one feels after the loss of loved ones?

Yes, for me life is stronger than death. Resilience and survival are about continuing the cycle of life. We owe it to the dead who otherwise would fall into oblivion. They need us like we need them. There is a beautiful poem by Birago Diop, a pioneer Senegalese writer entitled “Spirits” (“Souffles” in French, 1960). It beautifully expresses the belief in a link between the living and the dead. Here is an extract:

Listen to Things

More often than Beings,

Hear the voice of fire,

Hear the voice of water.

Listen in the wind,

To the sighs of the bush;

This is the ancestors breathing.

 

Those who are dead are not ever gone;

They are in the darkness that grows lighter

And in the darkness that grows darker.

The dead are not down in the earth;

They are in the trembling of the trees

In the groaning of the woods,

In the water that runs,

In the water that sleeps,

They are in the hut, they are in the crowd:

The dead are not dead.

 

It feels like people of a certain age accept death as part of an eventual outcome of living. For the younger generation however, it is not that they are unaware of death, they just do not want it at their doorstep as a familiar guest. Why do you think this is so?

I think that it is in the nature of youth to want to believe that death doesn’t concern them. They want to forge ahead; they do not wish to be slowed down by anything. But recent events should have changed that. With the pandemic, it is getting harder and harder to view death only as the preserve of the old. The new generations are confronted with huge challenges. They have inherited a troubled world. They will need clear vision and a lot of courage.

Death is the only certainty we have—and it is very democratic! Every living creature on earth will die at some point. Insects have a short lifespan, elephants live longer than us, whereas some trees are centuries old. But we will all reach our ends. Therefore, it is not so much death that is the issue but how we die.  It is a natural phenomenon for which we should all prepare. Animals teach us a lot. They too grow old and die but they don’t have that urge to possess and waste. They don’t even eat more than they need. It is humans who deliberately fatten them. We, humans, are not the superior beings we think we are. How we die and how we inflict death on others is our responsibility.

 

In the novel, the nurse’s perspective mentioned how women were the most affected by the Ebola virus because they are caregivers and usually the last to seek treatment.  How true is this?

I based this on fact. We observe this phenomenon on a daily basis. In communities, women are usually the caregivers, tending the young and the old. They put the family first. During the Ebola epidemic they were at the forefront of the battle. And in hospitals, the number of nurses directly exposed to the disease well exceeded that of doctors. At the beginning of the epidemic, they were not given appropriate equipment. Unfortunately, you must also take into account the fact that in an authoritarian society, women are not the key decision makers.

 

You write about the human disregard of the environment and how that led to the viral outbreak. Do you really believe that the outbreak of the Ebola virus could have been prevented?

Not necessarily. Even scientists don’t fully understand why we have outbreaks and what triggers them. There are a lot of viruses out there. In fact we cohabit with them on a daily basis. Some of them are harmless while others can be extremely lethal. But everybody seems to agree on one thing: when the ecosystem is broken, there are no checks and balances anymore. Nature cannot do its job of keeping species safe in the environment.  We need a pact of non-aggression between humans and nature. I know that it sounds a bit too sweet and utopian, but it’s not. There is an undeniable correlation between the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and the significant deforestation going on in those countries. This is not a recent phenomenon; the largest forest exploitations were established during successive colonisations by Western powers when the exportation of rare species to Europe began.

You also have to take into account the fact that the three countries in question were, at the time, totally unprepared to face the challenges of such an outbreak. Inadequate health systems, out-dated hospitals, poor equipment, and the shortage of trained medical personnel meant that it was a perfect storm. 

The inequality associated with global warming weighs heavily on the continent. While the African countries are among those emitting the least CO2, they are nevertheless among those that are already suffering the most from the planet’s rise in temperature. Their situation will only grow worse if efforts in favour of the environment are not intensified. In rich countries, the latest innovations will be able to reduce the harmful effect of pollution (electric cars, renewable energies, air purification, organic agriculture, recycling trash, etc.), whereas in emerging economies, an almost non-existent environmental technology will not be able to stem the disaster. Yet, for financial reasons, it is impossible to ask African countries not to exploit their non-renewable natural resources. In fact, governments want to have access to the revenue they generate and do not agree, even if they still could, for their countries to become ecological reservoirs or oxygen lungs for the planet. Something needs to happen as promises of help from Western countries might not come in time, especially considering the current world economic crisis.

 

In In the Company of Men, you explore some heavy themes such as separation, alienation, stigmatisation, and death. Was the writing process emotionally tasking for you to write this novel?

Yes, at times I found it challenging. But the massive solidarity that was put in place and the extraordinary courage displayed by ‘ordinary’ people made it an uplifting story to write, rather than a sad one. To a large extent, the book pays homage to local medical staff, ordinary citizens and international volunteers who stepped up and collaborated to neutralise the disease

 

The novel is not all doom and gloom. It throws a spotlight on those who fought with death and survived to live another day. Is this a masterclass in resilience for your readers, an important lesson in courage?

We have to look at the possibilities that a crisis can offer. It comes back to the question of memory and what we can learn from the past. We cannot just put a blanket over events, in particular where there is so much stigma and trauma involved—we must be stronger. Look at what is happening with the Covid-19 pandemic in the West. So many initiatives have been started to make sure that people will not forget that they will draw important lessons from these unprecedented times. It’s all about learning, and finding a bit more balance and equity in our lives. A lot of people want this and are working towards it, so I am cautiously optimistic that things are changing and that there will be a stronger wave of ecological consciousness. There’s a lot of pressure on African governments to do better on the Environment. Both the Global North and the Global South must be convinced that they have a common destiny, while respecting the plurality and diversity of contexts.