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WORK TITLE: Baturi
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
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COUNTRY: United Kingdom
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2012030830
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2012030830
HEADING: Stephen, Matthew
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100 1_ |a Stephen, Matthew
670 __ |a Contact zones, 2010: |b t.p. (Matthew Stephen)
PERSONAL
Born 1962, in London, England.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author; also works in software industry. Former electrical instructor, British Voluntary Service Overseas, Nigeria.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Matthew Stephen had a career as an electrical instructor in the British Voluntary Service Overseas before he published his novel Baturi. The novel is set in northern Nigeria during the 1980s and features a protagonist (also named Matthew) who teaches electrics at a small college. “Readers meet him just before he dismisses his training-college class for a three-week school vacation,” explained a Kirkus Reviews contributor. “He’s emotionally in flux; his girlfriend back home has ended their relationship, and he’s struggling with doubts over whether he’s imparting anything useful to his students. He’s also ambivalent about an impending visit with friends.” However, immediately before the vacation break Matthew has encountered another Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) worker, a Canadian nurse named Chantel, and as the break begins he is hoping that the two of them can rendezvous with some other VSO volunteers in a town some miles away from Matthew’s station at Hadejia. “By the time he returns to Hadejia … he has acquired a potent secret,” wrote a Bookmate website reviewer, “which he discovers has embroiled him in a plot”—to overthrow Nigeria’s notoriously corrupt government.
Critics enjoyed Baturi (a Hausa word meaning “white person” or “European”) for its evocation of Nigerian culture in the late twentieth century as much as for its madcap plot and its adventure. “Cultural integration, as Matthew tells us, is the key,” stated Zoe Morris, a fellow VSO worker, on the Bookbag website. “If you don’t assimilate you will not survive, and part of this is adapting to local ways of life.” Morris points out that many of the details of protagonist Matthew’s life in Hadejia are true to life, including the risk of illness and the sense of isolation that Matthew has, even after eighteen months on assignment in Nigeria. Even things Westerners think of as essentials—like refrigeration—are luxuries in remote northern Nigeria in the 1980s. “Matthew is a man of simple pleasures – some food that won’t confine him to the toilet for days afterwards, a chilled mineral on a sweltering day. His habits and patterns are ingrained, borne out of his environment, and the repetition throughout the story is soothing,” Morris reported. “When the heat gets too much he wanders down to a stall for a cold drink because that’s the way things work over there.” Even the corruption–and the support Matthew receives from the residents of Hadejia against the police—are true to life for the time. Baturi, Morris concluded, “will give you a new understanding” of what it means to be a VSO volunteer.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2017, review of Baturi.
ONLINE
Bookbag, http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/ (October, 2014), Zoe Morris, review of Baturi.
Bookmate, https://bookmate.com/ (June 14, 2018), review of Baturi.
Troubador, https://www.troubador.co.uk/ (June 14, 2018), author profile.
Matthew Stephen
I was born (1962) in London. Educated at Leighton Park School, Reading. In the mid-eighties, I took a British Voluntary Service Overseas post in northern Nigeria, as an Electrical Instructor. For most of my career, I have worked in the software industry, my work including public speaking, sales and blogging.
Print Marked Items
Stephen, Matthew: BATURI
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Stephen, Matthew BATURI Matador (Indie Fiction) $4.99 10, 23
A rash decision thrusts a young British volunteer into the middle of a Nigerian military coup in a debut
novel inspired by the author's own time in Africa. Twenty-four-year-old Matthew Ferguson is a math teacher
in the small town of Hadejia in the northern sector of Nigeria in the 1980s. He's been in the country for 18
months, working with the British Voluntary Service Overseas, and he's begun to acclimate to its climate,
food, and culture. However, he's not comfortable with the seemingly built-in "respect" he's accorded, solely
for being a "baturi" (white man). Readers meet him just before he dismisses his training-college class for a
three-week school vacation. He's emotionally in flux; his girlfriend back home has ended their relationship,
and he's struggling with doubts over whether he's imparting anything useful to his students. He's also
ambivalent about an impending visit with friends during a planned trip to Bama, near the Cameroon border,
because he's broke. It's during this journey--which is derailed before he ever reaches Bama--that Matthew
gets himself into more trouble than even his active imagination could have envisioned, as he finds himself in
the midst of an attempted revolution. What follows is an improbable two-week adventure that offers
moments of great exhilaration (including a car chase that will remind readers of scenes from the 1968 film
Bullitt), close calls, and plenty of angst. For good measure, there's also a budding romance with an attractive
Canadian woman named Chantel. The story may be on the far edge of credulity, but it's fun. Those who
come to the narrative seeking merely excitement, however, will need patience, as the action doesn't begin
until about two-fifths through the book. Still, the early sections contain some of the most evocative
passages, and they lay the groundwork for the real focus of the story, which is the people of Hadejia and the
lessons of true friendship. By the time things really start to get rolling, readers will be well-acquainted with
the main characters and the terrain they travel. In narrator Matthew, Stephen creates a likable, self-effacing
protagonist who ably imparts the warmth and generosity of the people he meets as well as the poverty,
corruption, and constant heat of Northern Nigeria: "I could feel rivulets of sweat growing under my hair.
Sweat began to trickle down my chest and down my face. Drops began to drip from the end of my nose."
Every walk he takes is an opportunity to reveal something about a country on the precipice of financial
collapse: "I reached the mournful site of an unfinished town gate. Like so many things in Nigeria, it had
failed to reach completion before its finance reached exhaustion." Matthew's fun-loving British helicopter
pilot buddy, Bob, provides a good foil for the novel's more reticent hero, and the Nigerian carpenter Koli is
so touching and steadfast that readers will remember him long after they turn the final page. Initially slow
but enjoyable and more complex than its more madcap shenanigans would suggest.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Stephen, Matthew: BATURI." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A504217604/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=89837fa8.
Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A504217604
Baturi by Matthew Stephen
Baturi by Matthew Stephen
B00OISR3AK.jpg
Buy Baturi by Matthew Stephen at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: General Fiction
Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: Zoe Morris
Reviewed by Zoe Morris
Summary: A wonderfully evocative story of life as a VSO in Nigeria, this combines neat observations of everyday life with some rather unconventional plot twists. Highly recommended.
Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
Pages: 249 Date: October 2014
Publisher: Matador
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9781784628024
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It's Nigeria and it's the 80s. Matthew is a VSO, on a placement at a college teaching electronics. Or trying to at any rate. When language skills are limited and resources are scarce, you have to make the most of what you've got, even if that means teaching the odd class on American culture rather than rewiring. If I tell you that the Prime Directive applies a lot when you're a VSO, you'll appreciate the difficulties Matthew has when his students want to stray further into the modern world and learn about how things work in Britain, concepts of inventions such as ATMs that are decades off reaching Nigeria (Those days may still be some way off. I actually had a hand written bank card a few years ago while a VSO in a country not too far away).
Cultural integration, as Matthew tells us, is the key. If you don't assimilate you will not survive, and part of this is adapting to local ways of life. Matthew is a man of simple pleasures – some food that won't confine him to the toilet for days afterwards, a chilled mineral on a sweltering day. His habits and patterns are ingrained, borne out of his environment, and the repetition throughout the story is soothing. When the heat gets too much he wanders down to a stall for a cold drink because that's the way things work over there, you buy then and there what you need for then and there. Some things never change. Even in 2010, you could get an ice cold Diet Coke if you went to the supermarket in Sierra Leone, but your VSO home would have no electricity, and no fridge, to keep a stockpile to hand. The story starts slowly, with mundane observations such as these, but the town is so foreign, and so vividly described I devoured every word and would have been quite happy had it ended there.
It didn't. Just as we're beginning to appreciate the struggles of everyday life for this Baturi (white man) the story picks up pace. Through a series of unfortunate and ill thought out events, Matthew finds himself on the wrong side of the law, unsure who we can trust and uncertain how he's going to get out in one piece. You can imagine the state of law enforcement in Nigeria at that time, and it's a scary position to be in. The plot unfolds quickly and I noted the way things seemed to go round in circles because that epitomises life in countries such as this, nothing is straight forward, everything is convoluted, and sometimes you have to wave cash in someone's face to get them to do what you want. Of course as a VSO you have very little cash, which only adds to the fun (for the reader) and frustration (for the volunteer). Anything goes in these situations, and it was refreshing to have little clue how the story would end because if there's one thing you learn as a white (wo)man in Africa, it's that for you at least, nothing is predictable.
The descriptive passages in the book are excellent and easily paint a picture of a place few readers will have experienced. For those who have been there, done that though, it's a real blast from the past. When Matthew talks about his furniture I remembered the foam sofa and chairs that were made new for me, all covered in a matching garish fabric. When he mentions the bundle of twigs that serve as a broom, I recalled trying (and failing) to do much sweeping with my own version. The observations on local life are equally telling. Nigeria in the 80s was a corrupt place by all accounts, and he neatly observes that only the corrupt would get ahead, for it would be unsafe to grant opportunities to anyone who had not demonstrated their penchant for unethical ways, lest they rat out those at the top when they joined them up there. This is of course not unique to Africa – in Mexico a few years before my VSO experience I remember happily bribing a policeman, because his fee was less than the fine he would otherwise be levying on me. C'est la vie.
These are some of the things you learn as a VSO. You've not drunk water until you've drunk it from a square plastic bag, biting off the corner and draining it dry. You've not settled in properly until you've been rather ill and hidden it from the folks back home, failing to mention extreme stomach sickness (in his case) or Malaria (in mine) until you're on the mend and ok to write 1980s letters or 21st century blogs about it. And you've not really understood karma until you've been let down by the police but then had things righted by the community. VSO appeals to people for different reasons, but to give up your life (and girlfriend) back home to take on a 2 year placement in the most foreign of environments takes some guts. Not everyone will get it, but this story goes a long way towards explaining not only the why but also the how, what it's like to be that person in that place. There are some initials that, simply put, define you. I'm heading to a meeting next week with someone I've never met before, I looked her up on Twitter and it said MTS 99. Which may not mean much to many, but I knew exactly what it represented as I'm MTS 04. VSO is a bit like that. My placement was maybe 25 years after this Baturi's but immediately on starting to read this I felt a connection. It's a cliché, but you don't understand unless you've done it. Of the dozen countries I've lived and worked in, my VSO experience stands out as unlike anything else, for good and bad reasons, and as Matthew regales his tale I got the distinct impression that this was the same for him.
I'd like to thank the author for sending us a copy to review. I enjoyed it immensely, and will recommend it to my VSO friends who will identify immediately but also to others who could learn a lot from it. It may not encourage you to sign up as a volunteer, but it will give you a new understanding for those who do and the true implications of it all.
If you're itching for more on Nigeria after reading this (I am!) then Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is well worth a look.
Matthew Stephen
Baturi
347 printed pages
Baturi is the story of a British VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) teacher, Matthew Ferguson. He is posted to a poorly equipped training college, attached to the small town of Hadejia, deep in the Sahel of northern Nigeria. As a white British male, he earns immediate celebrity status within the community, virtue of his skin colour. When walking through the town, he is frequently met with cries of 'Baturi', in the local language of Hausa this translates as 'white man'. It's the eighties, there are no telephones or internet connections, and Matthew's only communication with the rest of the world is via letters and the local grape vine. Visitors to his house are mostly unannounced; one such unannounced visitor is Chantel. She is an attractive Canadian volunteer, working as a nurse, and based in a town some 50 miles away. Her first visit to his house is brief, and clinical, but after she leaves, her striking image won't leave his thoughts. In a quest to develop his relationship with Chantel, Matthew leaps at an opportunity to accompany her on a holiday excursion. Expecting to join a gathering of fellow volunteers, they travel to a small town on Nigeria's eastern border. By the time he returns to Hadejia, he is alone, and wanted by the police. He has acquired a potent secret, which he discovers has embroiled him in a plot to over throw the Nigerian government. Although he survives to tell the tale, his thrilling, and often terrifying adventure, is driven more by his friendships, than his plans.