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When the Circus Leaves Town: What Hap...
What happens when a football club ups sticks and leaves its traditional home for pastures new? What replaces the terraces, stands and floodlights that tower above old town centres and terraced streets? How does football relate to the new landscapes that the clubs head to? What happens when football leaves home? When the Circus Leaves Town explores the impact of the ruptures created when clubs and supporters wave goodbye to their homes.
It examines disruption to matchday routines, erasure of geographic memories and the difficulties in repairing these, and considers whether such moves have been for better or worse. Writer Dave Proudlove walks the streets of towns and cities across the country visiting housing estates, retail parks and shiny new stadiums.
He talks to those involved with the relocation of football clubs - club officials, developers, politicians, fans - to understand the reasons behind the upheaval, and to bring us the full story of what happens when football leaves home.
The Light Christian Religious Educati...
The Light Christian Religious Educati...
Descent From Cherangany Hills: Memoir...
The life story of B. E. Kipkorir (1939-2015) is a stunning account told with the grace and ease of a seamless symphony; in captivating literary language, complete with rhetorical flashes of gripping phrases and simple sentences mortised to astonishing tightness. It is a story about the ultimate triumph of a man who beat great odds to scale the highest heights he possibly could.
A singular raconteur, the author weaves a tapestry – spanning many years – in quick rapid fire, both vivid and compelling. It’s a story to make you laugh, a story to make you cry, to build your faith to maximize your potential, for it is a story about possibilities.
We read fascination as the quintessential Marakwet village boy, with almost frightful upbringing turns into a consummate academic (albeit reluctantly), as he makes an epic journey through GAS Tambach, Alliance High School, Makerere University and finally, to Cambridge University, England.
Kipkorir, an amazing figure of pure will, took his burning ambition to equally deadly and fierce combat zones of war: study, the corporate world and public service; working, as a Deputy Clerk of the Sirikwa County Council, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Executive Chairman of the Kenya Commercial Bank and later, as Kenya’s Ambassador to Washington.
Then, in a cruel twist of fate, disaster struck the Kipkorir’s closely-knit family, with the force of a hurricane - and the family was shaken to a jolt - when Kipkorir’s wife, Lea, was diagnosed with cancer. The author nostalgically relieves his last days with Lea, in a language that is heartbreaking, poetic and haunting; he recounts joys past and envisions what could have been.
Despite the passionately penetrating, often unflattering accounts of his personal and family life, these memoirs are a work of history. Of no less relevance are his accounts of the incredibly amateurish approaches of European missionaries to the social engineering of African societies and their culture, aided in so small measure by colonial administrators, employing Africans’ own resources for the purpose! These memoirs are the history of his people, both local and national, in his time and circumstances. They inform and challenge. They are intended to inspire others to contribute further to the illumination of our time.
Bile on my Smile
Bile on My Smile is a collection of poems authored by the youngest and most brilliant poet in Kenya. Its motivation seems to largely emanate from the poet’s childhood experiences: meditations, self-hate, self-denial, trauma, frustrations, disappointments, and failed ambitions. Reading through the poems the reader feels like being in a dark room with an invisible body that is experiencing anguish and trauma, haunted by invisible ghosts and spirits.
Here is What Other’s Say
Jepkorir Koech’s collection of poems Bile on My Smile vibrates with enthusiasm and valour. The poet ventures into beaten paths as well unbeaten ones in her bid to touch the instinct and intellect of her reader. Utilisation, preservation and conservation of nature for collective good certainly come out as a well-thought-out theme. This, added to philosophical concepts love, beauty, death, truth, betrayal, loss and freedom, reflects deeply on the poet’s concern for humanity’s most salient issue today: Destruction of nature and impending attendant catastrophes! The poems are a promise of hope for humanity. -Bwocha Nyagemi Bwocha, Kisii University.
Window into Worlds
Dr. Evans Gesura Mecha’s poems in Window into Worlds stir the soul and evoke worlds beyond worlds. I am overjoyed to read them, as I believe other readers would. Mecha’s poetry easily blends the jigsaws of life in the present with that of antiquity and the metaphysical. It is as much rooted in contemporaneity, indigenous ethos, as in the inwardness of a universal rhythm which ripples through his poetry like a pure, crystalline stream flowing effortlessly. It is delightfully oblique yet not constricted by the artifice of rhetoric and prosody. The subterranean nuances trigger the mind to introspect and delve into untold depths of the “feeling intellect” (Wordsworth).His powerful imagism and natural impressionism makes it superbly impactful, permeating the deepest consciousness of the reader. His poetic diction revels as much in the ordinary beauty of everyday natural life as in the transcendental realm eluding the patterns of words. His poetry smells of the musk of the soil and wings out into the transcendental. Mecha takes one easily on the magic carpet of a poetic elysium into the realms of the multiverse. I am sure readers will revel in his poetry as much as I have. - Prof. Dr. Laksmisree Banerjee, Poet, Professor, Vocalist & Ex-Vice Chancellor; Universities of Calcutta, Ranchi & Kolhan, INDIA.
Chachu za Waja : Augustine Muhindo
Udhalimu wa wanawake na wanaume ni suala la kawaida. Kazi hii inadhihirisha uhalisia wa maisha katika familia nyingi za kisasa ambapo kuna ufeministi ambapo hata mwanamke anahisi kuwa nguzo ya familia. Maisha hayo ni sawa na yale watu waliyokuwa wakiishi katika nchi dhahania ya Sokoya, iliyokuwa na makabila mawili yaani Wakomoro na Warambi.
Riwaya yenyewe, inadhihirisha dhahiri shahiri jinsi wanaume wanavyodhulumiwa na wake zao. Bw. Mkata ni mfano bora anayedhalilishwa na mkewe Zekelina, mwanamke mashuhuri na maridadi katika mavazi yake kwa sababu ya hali yake ya uchechefu wa pesa. Latifu pia anadharauliwa na mchumba wake Firinda anayetambua kuwa hajatahiriwa kwa mujibu wa utamaduni wa Rambi.
Kinyume na matarajio, mahusiano yanazuka wakati ambapo wanawake wanawapenda wanaume na kuvuka mipaka na kutangaza hisia zao. Peremina anamchumbia Isma naye Firinda anamsalitikia Latifu na mahusiano hayo mawili yanaishia kwenye machozi.
Maoni ya wasomaji...
Anuani “Chachu za waja” inaafiki matukio yaliyoangaziwa kwenye kazi yenyewe. Pengine hakuna anuani bora zaidi ya Chachu za waja kusawiri dhamira ya mwandishi.
Mwandishi ametumia mbinu ya kipekee ya chachu katika harakatio za kuunda kazi yake kuonesha kwamba, swala analolizungumuzia lipo na waathirika ni wengi.
The Guy Who Fired His Boss by Sam Kar...
The Guy Who Fired His Boss is a book you must need to read if you are starting a new business or building one. It has helped many entrepreneurs find their space and given others the courage to start. Those who have been in business they have had their motivation renewed and those who feel lost rediscover the direction of their business.
Questions That Adolescents Ask (Unedi...
Questions That Adolescents Ask contain questions in their unedited form that Adolescents wrestle with and their biblical answers as given by a Christian counselor. The book is both a helpful guide to the adolescent as well as to parents, teachers and mentors. It will help them understand how the young people view their world.
Strategic Litigation and the Struggle...
There has been a rise in the use of strategic litigation related to seeking equality for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons. Such developments are taking place against the backdrop of active homophobia in Africa. The law and the general public should, argues the author, treat LGB persons in the same way that heterosexuals are treated.
In the past two decades,30 strategic cases have been led by LGB activists in the Common Law African countries, namely in Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda. While the majority of the cases have been successful, they have not resulted in significant social change in any of the countries. On the contrary, there have been active backlashes, counter-mobilisations, and violence against LGB persons, as well as the further criminalisation of same-sex relations and constitutional prohibitions on same-sex marriages in some of the jurisdictions.
The author argues that activists in Common Law Africa have to design LGB strategic litigation in such a way as to the actual social and political conditions in their countries if strategic litigation is to spur social change.
Mau Mau From Within: The Story of the...
The inside story of the struggles of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, referred to by British colonialism as the ‘Mau Mau rebellion’, is little known today. The autobiographical material written by Karari Njama (a senior leader in the Mau Mau hierarchy) and compiled by Donald L. Barnett was first published by Monthly Review Press in 1966, as Mau Mau From Within: An analysis of Kenya’s Peasant Revolt.
It was reprinted in 1970; it has remained out of print for many years. As the late Basil Davidson put it in his review of the first edition: “Njama writes of the forest leaders’ efforts to overcome dissension, to evolve effective tactics, to keep discipline, mete out justice … and to teach men how to survive in those merciless forests. His narrative is crowded with excitement.
Those who know much of Africa and those who know little will alike find it compulsive reading. Some 10,000 Africans died fighting in those years . Here, in the harsh detail of everyday experience, are the reasons why.” The book is an extraordinary story of courage, passion, heroism, combined with recounting of colonial terror, brutality and betrayal. It is a story of how the very idea of being ‘Kenyan’ was intimately linked to the idea of freedom, a connection that was destroyed not only by the firepower of the British, but also by those who collaborated and established themselves as the beneficiaries of neocolonial rule.
Disconnecting notions of freedom from identity left only a caricature that rapidly descended into tribalism and ethnicity. This momentous story of the struggle for freedom described here is relevant not only for a new generation of Kenyans but also for all those engaged in emancipatory struggles internationally. For so long as the experiences arising from the struggles described in this book are perceived as merely ‘African’ or ‘Kenyan’, it is not possible to fully grasp the contributions they have made to the struggle for a universalist humanity. What is recounted in this publication is more than an ‘analysis of a peasant revolt’. It is above all a history of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. As Ngūgī wa Thiong’o points out in his Preface to this new edition, ‘we don’t have to use the vocabulary of the colonial to describe our struggles.’
We were tempted to rename the book ‘Kenya Land and Freedom Army from Within.’ But because the original title has wide recognition, and and as one of the characteristics of movements of the oppressed is to appropriate derogatory terms
Harnessing the Trade Winds. The Story...
Harnessing the Trade Winds is the outcome of a generation of research undertaken in Nairobi, Mombassa and Zanzibar in East Africa, and Mumbai and Goa in India. Of her work the author says: "In all my research I found that Arab and particularly European, sources of information downplayed the importance of Indian trade in the Indian Ocean which goes back at least three thousand years BC.
[The book] attempts to rekindle in the Indian diaspora a justifiable pride in the achievements of its forebears in East Africa, and indeed other parts of the world. In East Africa they promoted the development of agriculture and industry and the globalization of trade stemming from their trading activities." "Blanche D'Souza's book is a most direct statement on 'brown man's' transcripts over thousands of years trade, labour and migrations for settlements against a pervading backdrop of Arab, British and Portugese rivalries in the Indian Ocean. In this wake Harnessing the Trade Winds adds to plural historical perspectives, in that the text upholds the value of diversity that shapes the identities and self-knowledge of the peoples of Asia and Africa.
It challenges those who hold the political reigns and direct policy, on education as well as race relations." - Sultan Somjee, Former head of Ethnography at the National Museums of Kenya, founder of the Community Peace Museums Programme and Foundation, and the Asian African Heritage Trust in Kenya.
Mathare: An Urban Bastion of Anti-Opp...
The Kenyan education system fights against memory, against acknowledging our past. But we need to recognize our pasts to grieve them, and in doing this work, we must tell these stories ourselves. For a long time, most of the narratives we have had about ourselves and our histories have either been the sanitized narratives of the neo-colonial state or the white-washed versions given by our colonial masters, and a lot has been lost in these versions. The stories we tell ourselves shape our esteem, decisions, and ultimately our destiny.
Thus, we must revisit our histories and uncover the various hidden truths that have long been buried. The past is all pervasive- we cannot escape it. It is part of who we are; our cultures, our behaviours, and manifests in all aspects of our day-to-day living. Knowing our true history connects us to our past and tap into a dimension of longitudinal meaning over time. Because of this, learning our true history is essential; history gives the past and the present visible form and meaning.
In doing this, history also allows us to see into the future by offering precedents for current behavior and forewarning us from repeating previous mistakes. But in a neoliberal education system, education is framed around investments in students as human capital, and the value of education is tied to the student’s prospects for future earnings. Such a limited approach to education raises concerns about the purpose of education and the relationship between schools, state governance, and democratic life.
Beyond education, neoliberal governance also results in the privatization of other public institutions and processes including urban planning. Harvey (1989) famously abstracted the spread of neoliberalism into urban planning as a shift from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism. Whereas managerial cities had been primarily concerned with providing services and facilities to the urban population by the local administration, entrepreneurial cities in an era of increased interurban competition, had to focus on attracting investment and employment more than ever before.
The consequent de-democratization of urban policies has left out a big chunk of the urban population from decision-making processes. This population continues to be threatened by unaffordable urban developments in the form of evictions and neglect. It is against this backdrop that Mathare, the urban bastion of the anti-oppression struggle in Kenya, exists.
Despite its role in the fight for Kenya’s independence and the post-colonial struggles for liberation, Mathare’s story is often overlooked. As Gathanga writes in his book, most people outside the settlement associate the name Mathare with the mental hospital bordering the settlement. For others, their narrative of Mathare is one of pity, considering that the place is known to house the urban poor.
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Mur...
Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction ― many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual ― and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less.
Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It’s almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action…
A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.
Saint Mazie: Roman by Jami Attenberg
Meet Mazie Phillips: big-hearted and bawdy, she's the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. It's the Jazz Age, with romance and booze aplenty--even when Prohibition kicks in--and Mazie never turns down a night on the town. But her high spirits mask a childhood rooted in poverty, and her diary, always close at hand, holds her dearest secrets.
When the Great Depression hits, Mazie's life is on the brink of transformation. Addicts and bums roam the Bowery; homelessness is rampant. If Mazie won't help them, then who? When she opens the doors of The Venice to those in need, this ticket-taking, fun-time girl becomes the beating heart of the Lower East Side, and in defining one neighborhood helps define the city.
Then, more than ninety years after Mazie began her diary, it's discovered by a documentarian in search of a good story. Who was Mazie Phillips, really? A chorus of voices from the past and present fill in some of the mysterious blanks of her adventurous life.
Inspired by the life of a woman who was profiled in Joseph Mitchell's classic Up in the Old Hotel, Saint Mazie is infused with Jami Attenberg's signature wit, bravery, and heart. Mazie's rise to "sainthood"--and her irrepressible spirit--is unforgettable.
The Society of Reluctant Dreamers by ...
When Daniel Benchimol—consummate dreamer—uncovers the photographed reveries of a famous Mozambican artist, Moira, his fascination quickly develops to obsession as the sight lines between reality and dreams get harder to bring into focus
Daniel Benchimol spends his dreaming hours interviewing revolutionaries and writers. In this treacherous sleepscape, we find the Angolan anti-communist Jonas Savimbi, Muammar Gaddafi, hunched and hiding in a gutter, and Julio Cortázar as a great billowing tree, speaking to Daniel through an alphabet of clouds. He dreams wild dreams of people he’s never met, squinting at them as if submerged in the hazy waters of southern Angola.
When Daniel finds a camera on the beach, he becomes obsessed with the woman in the photos. Moira is a Mozambican artist with a similar preoccupation with her subconscious life – she stages her dreams in her artwork. The two meet, and together they explore the cloudy edges of their nightly visions, tugging at the fringed hem of the real. The Society of Reluctant Dreamers is a delicately crafted glimpse into the aftermath of Angolan independence, a postcard sent to prod the illusion of peace and freedom.
