Kabria’s rebellious thoughts about her household situation are droll and show the author’s sense of humour about the battle that lies ahead if women are to achieve anything like equality in the home or anywhere else. There are light-hearted moments in the novel, especially through the motif of ‘Creamy’ – Kabria’s capricious old VW Beetle, and Fofo is a spirited and intelligent girl whose sassy chat with Odarley is funny and wise. Darko doesn’t dwell on it, but even as Fofo enters rehabilitation under the auspices of MUTE there is still the unresolved question of whether she has AIDS or not. Superstition plays a part in what happens next, but it’s poverty, ignorance, gender relations and hopelessness that underlie the tragedy of these lives. When Fofo finds out and Maa Tsuro is confronted by what’s happened, Kpakpo wangles the child into a ‘domestic help agency’ which is of course a brothel. Kpakpo sexually abuses Baby T. and when she turns for help to an old family friend called Onko, he rapes her. She is illiterate and unemployed and she falls for sweet-talking men who hint at regular income but tragically for her children these men turn out to be more than just losers taking advantage of her. Maa Tsuro is a victim of her own fecundity and the widespread belief that women are better off with a bad man than the shame of not being wanted. Part of the achievement of this book is the insight into the complexities underlying street life. They enlist the help of Sylv from a community radio station, and together they confront the shocking truth about Baby T.’s short life. ![]() ![]() ![]() was found brutally murdered in the marketplace in another Accra slum called Agbogbloshie, and would have become just another forgotten casualty of slum life were it not for Kabria and her friend Dina at MUTE. Like her older sister Baby T., she is cast out to fend for herself by her feckless mother Maa Tsuro, and like Baby T. When Kabria and Fofo cross paths, the young girl’s back story is gradually revealed. (Gender relations has been a theme in many of the recent African novels I’ve read). Kabria is harassed by her demanding children and a bone-idle husband who expects his wife to wait on him even though she is in full time work as well. The scene then shifts abruptly to the middle-class life of Kabria, a good-hearted researcher for MUTE, an NGO which is a repository for alternate stories not found in books. She flees to her friend Odarley where we learn that Poison controls even the shared toilets and that Fofo is constipated because all she’s had to eat is bread. It’s a story of exploitation and neglect replicated in rapidly growing cities in many developing countries from India to Mexico, made more distressing because these children have families.įaceless begins in a slum cynically christened Sodom and Gomorrah with 14-year-old Fofo narrowly escaping rape by Poison, a Street Lord and local thug. It is a story of street children in the chaotic slums of Accra (the capital of Ghana) and although it ends with a hopeful resolution for one child, the novel leaves an indelible impression that there is no future for thousands of others. I discovered it via Celestine’s review at Reading Pleasure but even so I was unprepared for the bleak world it represents with such chilling authenticity. Faceless by Ghanian author Amma Darko, is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read.
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