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Sakagwa’s Ghost
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Sakagwa’s Ghost, originally published in Kiswahil as Kivuli cha Sakawa, is a story about one of Africa’s legendary heroes. A seer, strategist and medicine man, Sakagwa’s legend lives to date, holding that many of his predictions have come to pass. His wisdom, some say, served to assure the survival of the Abagusii community in the face of colonial incursion.
In this this story, Sakagwa finds himself at a crossroads following the death of his father, a prominent leader in his own right. Conservative elders in the community, feeling threatened by this youngster’s demonstrated wisdom and knowledge are determined to dim his rising star. Will they succeed?
Sakagwa Ng’iti was born and lived in the Abagusii community in western Kenya at the turn of 19th Century (1800). The unfolding story in this book did take place, probably in slightly a different way from that depicted here.
By chronicling this episode, the author gives the story a new lease of life, through artistic rendering, and offers chance for others to comment or offer versions of the story as they understand it.
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The Village Pariah by Imali J. Abala
The Village Pariah, narrated in verse, dramatizes the story of Rosie Kasovo, a beautiful and lonely woman from Ngoroke village. Abandoned by her husband shortly after their marriage when he secures a job in the city, her striking beauty unwittingly becomes her double-edged sword, inviting relentless scrutiny from the people of Ngoroke. Every action she takes falls under their watchful gaze. Despite her sincere efforts to contribute positively to the common good of the community, her deeds are met with skepticism. As the accusations and betrayal against her mount, one question remains: will Rosie be able to emerge from this ordeal unscathed, or will she crumble under the weight of her village’s judgment?
What Others Say
The Village Pariah is a remarkable book illustrating how beauty was once believed to guarantee happiness and a seamless life, yet for Rosie, a Logooli woman, it has become a barrier, a pariah wall, isolating her from the community. Strangely, the fate of the entire village appears intertwined with hers, their destinies woven into the fabric of their relentless gossip. Into this tangled web steps Eliab, a man lacking noble standing but propelled by the villagers’ whispered truths, determined to confront her. If his impulsive action can mend their afflictions, both tangible and perceived and liberate the unfortunate souls ensnared by her charm, then so be it. - Alfred Nyagaka Nyamwange, English/Literature Teacher and Deputy Principal at Bon’gota Secondary School.
Korondo-Panic: A Satirized Diary of a Kenyan’s Experience during the COVID-19 Pandemic
“Articles in this book overflow with humour and thought provoking jokes. The way Araka twists and plays around with names of public figures, their actions and inactions, and blends it with the joys and disappointments of ‘ordinary’ citizens is on another level. The style is readable and appealing. The articles revolve around the novel Coronavirus disease. This is a time to be told and retold to present and future generations.” - Rose Kong’ani Keya, Book Editor and Teacher
“The author has banked on wordplay to offer his contribution in chronicling a critical moment in our lives when COVID-19 threw the world into panic and confusion. The book tells of humanity’s inadequacies, hits and misses. Through his trademark satire, Araka shows that as human beings, we deserve better and can do better even when caught up in difficulties. - Edna, Gutenbergschule, Leipzig
“Many occurrences happen in everyday life and can go unnoticed despite being significant. Araka is a gifted writer that makes such occurrences memorable through satire and humour. The themes in the articles including: political manipulations, exploitation, corruption, family relations, hypocrisy, traditions, and modern technology are well intertwined in the writer’s rich narrative style with vivid descriptions that capture the reader to achieve reading this collection in the shortest time possible. I recommend this collection to readers that wish to relive occurrences in their lives and surroundings in a laughable way.” - George Onkundi, Principal, Nyamira School.
About the Author: Joshua Nyangau Araka is a journalist, creative writer and biographer. His other published works include: Peppered Path, Chronicles of the Idler-Volume One, and Beaten Odds, a Biography of Stephen Mabea.
The Trial of the GODS
The Trial of the Gods is the story of a man and his people who live in the Kalahari Desert. They believe that the land they occupy belongs to the Gods hence cannot be owned by anyone else, least of all Government. The book takes the reader through human rights Bushman activism in an environment they are considered uncivilized and stigmatized as scavengers; the wretched of earth, in the words of Franz Fanon.
As the government plans relocation and integration of Bushmen into "mainstream society" one man, Jay, and his people vehemently resist. It becomes a quest for justice, truth and conservation. They cannot listen to anyone, or get instructions from the Government, lawyers or judges. Only instructions from the Gods will do as to whether they should embrace the "dangerous" world of development and civilization. It becomes a matter of life and death as the man and his people realize that the Gods alone cannot help fight one of the richest governments in Africa. In the process their claims and demands reverberate across the land and the world, touching many human rights organizations and supporters.
Will they manage to fight a government financed by the most precious diamonds in the world?
Here is what others say:
"The Trial of the Gods is a gripping tale of conflict between modernity and tradition, old and new conventions, conservation and human rights." - Anonymous
"The Trial of the Gods is more than just a story. It's a commentary about how determination, courage and love will ultimately defeat greed. It is definitely a must-read." - Olopeng Rabasimane, Columnist, The Botswana Gazette
Oral Poetry in Africa :The Abagusii of Kenya
Oral Poetry in Africa: The Abagusii of Kenya highlights characteristics of African
oral traditions with particular focus on the oral poetry of the Abagusii of Kenya. It
shows that oral poetry in the Abagusii community covered every facet of life. The
community’s social-political and economic life, history, values, norms and customs
were stored in the oral poetry, in addition to proverbs, riddles and folktales. Notably,
oral poetry coloured the entire life of Omogusii and was sung during birth, initiation,
marriage and death ceremonies. This book documents the oral poetry of the
community in its original form, and in various versions that were practised or sung in
different parts of the region inhabited by the community. Further, the book discusses
the context in which this poetry was sung and explains some of the cultural practices,
norms, and customs that surround or motivated the composition of the poetry.
The advent of colonialism had ‘corrupting’ influence on the original poetry, more so
with the adoption of English words and phrases. This kind of poetry has not been left
out.
Aside from the general poetry and the book also captures emeino, the Abagusii
classical oral poetry. While the general poetry utilized improvisation as a technique in
its presentation and performance, the classical poetry was a fixed form that demanded
to be sung in its original form. Unlike the general poetry that, in its ephemerality,
invited additions and subtractions from the text, classical poetry was permanent in
text with no room for improvisation.
Oral Poetry in Africa: The Abagusii of Kenya is meant for students of oral literature
at university level. However, it can also be used by researchers of African oral
literature, culture, anthropology, history and sociology. Indeed, it is also good for the
general reader who is interested in the culture of Abagusii and African people, in general
Where are True Parents?
In Where are True Parents?, Augustine Rugutt explores ways in which parenting determines children’s behaviour and character beyond formative years. In doing so, he associates society’s changing value system, social pressures and use of technology with parenting outcomes, some of which are unpalatable in the eyes of society. He asks whether parents are truly aware of the impact of their conduct and action in shaping the future of their children.
A fundamental question is whether parents truly know their children. On the other hand, do children really understand their parents? Such understanding is essential for a sound foundation for society. He makes the irrefutable case that poorly parented children are likely to be poor parents themselves. He challenges parents to understand that parenting is a God-given responsibility. As such, parents owe it to the Maker and the future of society to play their role as parents guided by teachings from the Bible. Step by step advice, most of which is informed by his work with Church, is invaluable for today’s parent.
Deborah and the Chicken
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"Through My African Eyes!” is a concise narrative covering some of the major players in 20th century African politics. The book is rich with insights into the personal and intellectual underpinnings of many historical events in Africa. Chronicles of some pretty interesting Africans from warlords, soldiers, victims and politicians lend insight into Jeff’s celebrated journalistic style. Through his eyes we are made to understand the role of journalist’s as binders of our social fabric.
"Through My African Eyes” is very informative and quite humorous, utilizing a modern quick precise narrative style. He is able to describe complex global geopolitical issues with incisive analysis. The book surf’s one through the experience with speed and historical accuracy. We see the visual the words impart, rather than being stuck in prose. The best part is being able to walk the journey informed by a largely Kenyan perspective. Jeff outlines clearly how biased reportage can splinter any society and promote its disintegration by pandering to people’s lowest instincts.
The narrative draws out lesser-known aspects of his life. Jeff’s unblinking examination of his grandfather’s life is historically illuminating and serves as a symbolic bridge between the beginning and the end of colonialism. Jeff is the first African ever to win a Television Emmy and a George Foster Peabody. He merited the Vernon Jarrett Award as well as the prestigious! ‘Prix Bayeux’ for reportage that arrested global crises."
Marriage Built to Last
Marriage is a journey that begins with a decision. But that decision belies the myriad challenges that often wreck many marriage relationships, even before they take shape. How can you make your marriage survive the mile and make it to the finish line? In Marriage Built to Last, Jennifer Karina addresses the key challenges that face the modern marriage: communication, intimacy, sex, infidelity, and finances.
Using her experience of over 30 years as both wife and mother, as well as those of others from her counselling sessions, she shows that there is no challenge too impossible to overcome. Beginning with the marriage proposal, she walks the marriage journey step by step, in a way that makes it so easy to follow. This is a useful guide to all women, especially young women, who are determined to find and sustain a happy and lasting marriage.
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The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie burst onto the literary scene with her remarkable debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which critics hailed as "one of the best novels to come out of Africa in years” (Baltimore Sun), with "prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it powerfully evokes” (The Boston Globe); The Washington Postcalled her "the twenty-first-century daughter of Chinua Achebe.”
Her award-winning Half of a Yellow Sun became an instant classic upon its publication three years later, once again putting her tremendous gifts—graceful storytelling, knowing compassion, and fierce insight into her characters’ hearts—on display.
Now, in her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.
In "A Private Experience,” a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she’s been pushing away. In "Tomorrow is Too Far,” a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother’s death.
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An Ordinary Man
April 2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide--Read more about the conflict and the amazing life story of the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda in this remarkable account
Readers who were moved and horrified by Hotel Rwanda will respond even more intensely to Paul Rusesabagina’s unforgettable autobiography. As Rwanda was thrown into chaos during the 1994 genocide, Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, turned the luxurious Hotel Milles Collines into a refuge for more than 1,200 Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees, while fending off their would-be killers with a combination of diplomacy and deception.
In An Ordinary Man, he tells the story of his childhood, retraces his accidental path to heroism, revisits the 100 days in which he was the only thing standing between his "guests” and a hideous death, and recounts his subsequent life as a refugee and activist.
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Keeping Hope Alive
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Born in Africa
Africa does not give up its secrets easily. Buried there lie answers about the origins of humankind. After a century of investigation, scientists have transformed our understanding about the beginnings of human life. But vital clues still remain hidden. In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, recounting their intense rivalry, personal feuds, and fierce controversies as well as their feats of skill and endurance.
The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than twenty species of extinct humans. They have firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind but also of modern humans. They have revealed how early technology, language ability, and artistic endeavour all originated in Africa; and they have shown how small groups of Africans spread out from Africa in an exodus sixty thousand years ago to populate the rest of the world. We have all inherited an African past
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Replenishing the Earth
Brief Summary
An impassioned call to heal the wounds of our planet and ourselves through the tenets of our spiritual traditions, from a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize It is so easy, in our modern world, to feel disconnected from the physical earth. Despite dire warnings and escalating concern over the state of our planet, many people feel out of touch with the natural world. Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai has spent decades working with the Green Belt Movement to help women in rural Kenya plant—and sustain—millions of trees.
With their hands in the dirt, these women often find themselves empowered and "at home” in a way they never did before.
Maathai wants to impart that feeling to everyone, and believes that the key lies in traditional spiritual values: love for the environment, self-betterment, gratitude and respect, and a commitment to service.
While educated in the Christian tradition, Maathai draws inspiration from many faiths, celebrating the Jewish mandate tikkun olam ("repair the world”) and renewing the Japanese term mottainai ("don’t waste”). Through rededication to these values, she believes, we might finally bring about healing for ourselves and the earth.
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The Challenge for Africa by Wangari Maathai
Brief Summary
Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, offers a refreshingly unique perspective on the challenges facing Africa, even as she calls for a moral revolution among Africans themselves, who, she argues, are culturally deracinated, adrift between worlds.The troubles of Africa today are severe and wide-ranging. Yet what we see of them in the media, more often than not, are tableaux vivantes connoting poverty, dependence, and desperation.
Wangari Maathai presents a different vision, informed by her three decades as an environmental activist and campaigner for democracy.
She illuminates the complex and dynamic nature of the continent, and offers "hardheaded hope” and "realistic options” for change and improvement. With clarity of expression, Maathai analyzes the most egregious "bottlenecks to development in Africa,” occurring at the international, national, and individual levels–cultural upheaval and enduring poverty among them–and deftly describes what Africans can and need to do for themselves, stressing all the while responsibility and accountability.Impassioned and empathetic, The Challenge for Africa is a book of immense importance.
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ISBN:9780307390288
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Crisis In The Horn of Africa
The most dangerous corner of Africa is its north-east corner where instability reigns and terrorism thrives on the antagonisms of all of its governments. This region, comprising Ethiopia, Sudan and now South Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea, and stretching to include Kenya and Uganda, is a pivotal geopolitical pressure point in world politics.
It stands at the hinge of Africa and the Middle East. It was of vital interest to the superpowers during the Cold War and remains, in the post-Cold War period, a key area in international relations and a major source of mineral wealth, while its sufferings have been described as a scar on the conscience of humanity.
But seemingly endemic political chaos, failed states, terrorism and international piracy have dealt a death blow to the ambitions of the US and her allies in the international community to further a New World Order of liberal democracy. Peter Woodward's book is essential reading for Africa and international relations specialists, including policy planners."
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Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza
Brief Summary
Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.
Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.
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Breakout Nations
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As an era of easy money and easy growth comes to a close, China in particular will cool down. Other major players including Brazil, Russia, and India face their own daunting challenges and inflated expectations. The new "breakout nations" will probably spring from the margins, even from the shadows. Ruchir Sharma, one of the world’s largest investors in emerging markets for Morgan Stanley, here identifies which are most likely to leap ahead and why.
After two decades spent traveling the globe tracking the progress of developing countries, Sharma has produced a book full of surprises: why the overpriced cocktails in Rio are a sign of revival in Detroit; how the threat of the "population bomb" came to be seen as a competitive advantage; how an industrial revolution in Asia is redefining what manufacturing can do for a modern economy; and how the coming shakeout in the big emerging markets could shift the spotlight back to the West, especially American technology and German manufacturing.
What emerges is a clear picture of the shifting balance of global economic power and how it plays out for emerging nations and for the West. In a captivating exploration studded with vignettes, Sharma reveals his rules on how to spot economic success stories. Breakout Nations is a rollicking education for anyone looking to understand where the future will happen.
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The Last Word by Yusuf Dawood
The Last Word by Yusuf Dawood concludes the quartet of the Surgeon's Diary - in book format. The other three are Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, Off my Chest, and Behind the Mask.
The beautifully executed stories in the Last Word are adorned with occurrences from the author's extensive travels and medical experiences, some heart-rending and others with exultant endings. Dawood's stories are lit with humor and wit that make the myriad medical challenges seem surmountable.
The stories though appearing in the Surgeon's Diary are fresh and authentic. Just like in the other three titles that form the quartet, the author has once again used his scalpel and pen with prowess to bring real surgical drama to our doorstep. Dawood, a celebrated surgeon and formidable author, has authored The Price of Living, One Life too Many, Water Under the Bridge, among others. The Last Word is his eleventh title.
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The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries.
These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within. "
The White Masai
Brief Summary
The four-million-copy international bestseller of the incredible love story between a European woman and an African warrior The White Masai combines adventure and the pursuit of passion in a page-turning story of two star-crossed lovers from vastly different backgrounds. Corinne, a European entrepreneur, meets Lketinga, a Samburu warrior, while on vacation in Mombasa on Kenya's glamorous coast.
Despite language and cultural barriers, they embark on an impossible love affair. Corinne uproots her life to move to Africa—not the romantic Africa of popular culture, but the Africa of the Masai, in the middle of the isolated bush, where five-foot-tall huts made from cow dung serve as homes. Undaunted by wild animals, hunger, and bouts with tropical diseases, she tries to forge a life with Lketinga.
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Belonging in Africa
When Sara and Sam fall in love, they presume Sara's white European skin and Sam's black African skin will not be of interest in 1978 Nairobi, the cosmopolitan and free-thinking capital of Kenya where they both live. They are wrong. Soon they must face painful prejudices from the outside world, as well as their own families. They also slowly realize that unexpected deep-rooted differences exist between them.Sara and her Dutch expat parents have happily settled in Kenya for a few years, but this is only the latest in a long list of countries they called home. Soon Sara's father will be transferred to a new position, and the family must move to a new country again.But things are different for Sara this time. She is 18 years old, and absolutely certain she belongs in Kenya. She plans to stay forever--especially after she falls passionately in love with Sam.After all, on the surface of it, Sara and Sam have a great deal in common. They both come from comfortable middle-class families. They attend excellent schools as academic high achievers. They balance on the cusp of adulthood, and have every reason to think their futures will be bright. But soon enough, the differences between them are too apparent to be ignored, even by them. And this is only the start of the ordeals Sam and Sara must overcome.Sara is a pampered only child. Sam is the eldest son of the first wife of a polygamous Ugandan family. Sara does not at first understand the significance of his position. It takes time for her to see how deeply his young life is influenced by the many responsibilities that rest on his shoulders.The lovers suffer from prejudices from people close to them, as well as from strangers. They are startled to discover that both sets of parents oppose their union, and believe their child should find a better partner within their own cultures.Perhaps most complicated of all is the slow realization that Sara and Sam have very different expectations of each other. Sam presumes he has certain rights as the man in the relationship. Sara does not automatically subscribe to his position of leader, or consider it her duty to follow.
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