What It Takes to Save a Life
From “Igifu,” by Scholastique Mukasonga (translated by Jordan Stump):
“Don’t talk,” said Mama, again and again. She slipped a folded piece of banana leaf between my lips, and my mouth filled with a delicious, hot, sweet porridge that after a few swallows seemed to fill the hole Igifu had dug in my stomach. Much later, she told me how she and Papa had heard my cry and found me unconscious on the ground. They’d carried me to their bed. In spite of the shame it would bring her, Mama had gone to wake up the neighbors, the whole village, in the middle of the night. Together they’d filled a little basket with sorghum that Mama ground down to make the nourishing porridge that brought me back to life…
The book jacket of Scholastique Mukasonga’s short story collection, Igifu, says her writing “radiates with the strength of a survivor.” As a child who lived through persecution of Tutsi in Rwanda during the 1950s and 60s, and as an adult who learned of the death of 37 members of her family in the Tutsi genocide in 1994, she knows loss and deprivation on a scale far beyond which a collection of words should be able to describe.
Her strength, a reflection of her survival, radiates from the page throughout Igifu. This passage from her story of the same name, “Igifu,” perfectly captures the experience of not only how an individual can persist through the hardest of times but also how the act of survival through hunger must involve the physical effort, social pressure, and bond of human love of the many who surround one.
Igifu — Hunger made palpable in its personification — digs without concern into the life of this little girl.
The girl was found by her father. She is consoled by words from her mother. Then both of them work to pull their child back from the grip of death. It’s understood here that the moment of “they’d carried me to their bed” lasts for some time longer than the quickness of a brief carry from one room to another. The parents must have paced and discussed what to do. They needed to find a course of action and find food from somewhere to revive their girl. In that time, they must have also unwound all the options within their immediate power. They had no food before, which is why the child collapsed, so despite wanting more of what their family always lacks, they would have run out of realistic options.
Necessity for more hurries this into a broader social endeavor. Surely the village has some food for this starving girl. If she doesn’t get it, she will die; but reaching out will cause shame.
Again, the quickness of “Mama had gone to wake up the neighbors, the whole village” hides the time this outreach must have taken and the intensity it must have comprised. The mother would have run to every house as she wailed for help. Even a small village could have contained a handful of other houses. Even one person’s cries, “in the middle of the night,” must have reflected on the silent background to cause alarm even without a physical pounding on doors.
Love of the girl’s family of course started this production. Their attention, caring, discussion, and fearlessness against shame led them into the village, which made the girl’s saving possible. The only way she received the “delicious, hot, sweet porridge” was because everyone came together, despite challenge and social norms.
The way Mukasonga writes this collective action is special first, as I’ve said, in the way she encapsulates this excited and winding course of events in the span of a couple brief statements.
These sentences expand because of the magnitude of the situation. In their expansion, they heighten the effect of the story that involves myriad aspects of the experience of being human.
Somehow more than that, this passage also involves the entire village and winds back upon itself to complete the circle. It feels like it reaches for more but is simultaneously circular so you can remember the root cause of it all. Or maybe so you can better reflect on the regeneration of life.
The girl has been rescued, and you see the porridge that nourished her. Then you’re told the story of how it happened. And at the end, you see the porridge again. That simple savior of warm grain begins and ends this incident, but the nourishment was only possible because of the people involved and the bond they share.