Books Available!

 My books - Finding Kony, The Last Rhino, Freida's Secret and My African Anthology are all available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other electronic bookstores. None of them are expensive.  Paper and ebooks are both available. Reviews for the books are found in this blog which focuses on reviews and commentaries about Africa, especially books set in or about Africa. I trust new readers will find something of interest in this blog and/or in my African stories.  

Utter Balderdash!

 

A comment on Rwanda’s 30-year assault on Congo – the crimes, the criminals and the cover-up by Judi Rever

    Conspiracy advocate Judi Rever describes violence that has plagued eastern Congo for the past thirty years. She accuses Rwandan President Paul Kagame of being behind it all. Furthermore, she alleges that the conflict, especially the deaths of hundreds of thousands (her figure) of Rwandan Hutu refugees, were the result of intentional American policy.  Specifically, that the U.S. government aided and abetted Rwandan and Ugandan forces and their local proxies in order to murder the Hutus, depose Mobutu and secure mineral rights to the region.  Her allegations in that regard are simply spurious.

    Woven within her bag of lies are some facts including accurate quotations from me and other American ambassadors. Even though she quotes us, Rever blithely dismisses our statements as fabrications designed to cover-up American involvement.  Rever especially impugns the reputation of Robert Houdek, accusing him of being a CIA mastermind, but who in reality as a State Department retiree, headed up the USAID team in Kisangani and liaised with UNHCR in the successful effort to repatriate thousands of refugees to Rwanda.

    No student or observer of the region, including American diplomats, doubt that violence, some of it horrific, occurs there.  Rever names some of the African cast responsible. Yet, she returns to the allegation that somehow the U.S. is responsible.  This sentiment is both patronizing and racist because it infers that Africans are not competent to wage their own wars or pursue their own interests. They must rely on the U.S. for direction.

    Don’t honor this garbage by buying this book.

The Founders

 

I write occasional reviews of books by Peace Corps authors for PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org. Following is a review of The Founders by Bryan Tenney, Dorrance Publishing, 2025

The premise of the novel, which appears in the first chapter, is that Thomas Jefferon and George Washington are reincarnated from their times to ours.  Their mission as devised by the scientific cabal that brought them back to life is to cleanse modern America from an evil tyrant, aka Trump.

But first the founders must realize when and where they are. They have to come to terms with the times and with the changes that the centuries have wrought.  A sub-plot is that Jefferson remembers a treasure, which he recovers. This provides the where-with-all for the two to pay their way but also alerts law enforcement to mystery bandits.  Much of the novel revolves around their moving around the country to avoid capture.

Value in the story comes from the mirror in which we see ourselves through the founders’ eyes. They marvel at dress, transportation, communications, and race relations in the current era and bewail the loss of simplicity and courtesy in everyday life, and in politics especially, comity.

Corrupt, venial, misogynist President Bribe is a thinly veiled portrait of Trump.  Despite the author’s effort to depict him, the reality of Trump’s egregious behavior is greater than the fiction.  Some things you just cannot make up.  Nonetheless, Bribe provides comic relief as the founders finally engage in their mission.

In the end it all works out although the fate of the protagonists remains unresolved.

This novel is a mirror, a satire and an inditement.  The author’s desire for a cure to current ills comes through strongly.  That is the strength of the tale. Let’s look at ourselves, make honest judgements and corrections.

Robert Gribbin built rural water systems as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya (68-70).  He later served forty years in the U.S. Foreign Service as a diplomat and ambassador. He is the author of two memoirs; In the Aftermath of Genocide – The U.S. Role in Rwanda and My African Anthology. His latest novel is Freida’s Secret, a story starting with Stanley’s rescue of Emin Pasha in 1888 and culminating in a treasure hunt in Idi Amin’s Uganda.

The Emperor Revealed!

 

Bokassa 1er by Pierre Pean, editions Moreau, 1977 and L’Ogre de Berengo by Bernard Loubat, editions Lefeuvre, 1981, are books in French about Jean Bedel Bokassa who, in 1977, crowned himself emperor of Central Africa.  I was there at the coronation as the gift bearer from the U.S. government.  At the time I was the desk officer at the Department of State for the Central African Republic. I volunteered for the task of carting the gift, a clipper ship etched into Stubben glass, to Bangui.  (There is a piece about the coronation in my book My African Anthology).  I had previously served a two-year tour (74-76) as a junior diplomat at the embassy in Bangui and would return in 1992 as ambassador. By then a much more mentally feeble Bokassa was in prison. He was released in the aftermath of the election of 1993 and confined to house arrest until his death a year or so later.  This aside is to state that I met Bokassa on several occasions in the 1970s. I congratulated him on becoming emperor in 1977. Bokassa wrote me letters in my capacity as ambassador while he was incarcerated in the 90s, but I judged it wise not to reply.  Nor did it seem wise for me to visit him once he was released from prison. 

Without doubt, Bokassa was a key figure in the history of Oubangui-Chari/Central African Republic/Central African Empire.  These two books delve at great length into his chaotic reign.  Bokassa1er is a biography. It relates Bokassa’s rise from the village, his 27-year stint in the French army, back to Bangui in the nascent army at independence, his 1965 coup d’etat and subsequent life as president à vie, then emperor.  The author tells many of the stories that are outrageous, funny, or horrifying that characterized Bokassa’s tenure as head of state.  He ruled through intimidation and fear and did not hesitate to murder or imprison his enemies. Additionally, the book reports extensively on the coronation itself, and France’s complicity in the event. Pean also provides the context of a nation being run into the ground economically by the greed and capriciousness of its leader.

In the L’Ogre de Berengo Loubat expands on these themes.  Further, he reports in detail the massacres of January and April 1979 that led to Bokassa’s ouster, as well as the ouster itself by French paratroops in September 1979. However, about half of L’Ogre is a recitation of three weeks author Loubat spent in Bangui in the summer of 1979 in a quest to get the emperor on record through a filmed interview.  It was a Kafkaesque sojourn. Loubat, his cameraman and a sycophantic (to Bokassa) French guide were feted, praised, spied upon, reviled, and feared as they periodically called on the emperor. They listened to his tirades and suffered from the bizarre protocols of the imperial court and the fearful hesitancy of its councilors. In the interim the journalists carefully sounded out “sources” in the capital and gleaned many views about the emperor and the state of the nation.  Candidly reported, the chronicle paints a sad picture of a megalomanic, paranoic, narcissist leader sowing the seeds of his own demise while leading a nation to ruin.

While reading these books in the spring of 2026, I could not help but seeing parallels between the personalities and actions of Jean Bedel Bokassa and Donald J. Trump.

These books gave my French a workout. The texts jumped about, used lots of colloquialisms, metaphors and odd vocabulary. My dictionary was quite useful. 

Turmoil in the Congo - War, Conservation and Gorillas

 

The Guardian of the Gorillas, by Robert E. Whitehead, Xlibris, 2025

     This is a fascinating biography of Adrien Deschryver, an extraordinary Belgian who lived through the trying times of Congolese independence and mercenary incursions in eastern Congo, later to evolve into a conservationist, researcher, habituator and protector of the rare gorillas of Kahuzi-Biega Park.   Although related to and written down by author Robert Whitehead, the story is told in the first person, in Deschryver’s own words.

    The tale begins with his migration as a youth to eastern Congo, near Bukavu, in the 1950s where Deschryver’s parents bought a quinine plantation. In the company of Batwa tackers, the boy began to know the nearby forest, home of gorillas.  In the 1960s eastern Congo burst into flames, first with independence and then off and on for the next six years engulfed in vicious internal rebellions accompanied by bloody mercenary incursions. As a young man Deschryver was caught up in all of this. He defended his family and friends and walked a tightrope balancing his – often violent – actions against the need to maintain credibility with the new authorities.  More than once, he had to flee for his life.  Ultimately, he cobbled together a truce that enabled him to remain in place.

    As planter prospects diminished on account of nationalization, Deschryver turned his attention to conservation. He was named director of Kahuzi-Biega forest and presided over it as it became a national park.  Deschryver was determined to get to know the elusive gorillas of the forest and spent months devising methods to observe them.  He realized early on that if the park was to maintain its integrity and pay its way, gorillas must become a tourist attraction. Patience, trial and error resulted in success.  Kahuzi-Biega became the foremost location for gorilla viewing.  Although Deschryver’s methods were sharply criticized by Dian Fossey who eschewed tourism, the formula worked for Zaire.  Deschryver rightly deserves a place among the pantheon of primatologists.

    This book captures the tension, the squabbles, the violence, the intrigue and the relationships of a volatile man as he confronts the challenges set before him. His tale is well written, well-paced and well worth reading.  

Murder Mystery in Kenya

 

Murder on Safari by Elspeth Huxley, Harper Brothers, 1939

              I found this book in a neighborhood little library. It is no longer available commercially, so if you want to read it, find a good library. It is a murder mystery set in Kenya in the 1930s written by prominent Kenyan author Elspeth Huxley.  Because she drew extensively on her knowledge of Africa, the setting is impeccable. The sights, smells and events of a bush safari are clearly evoked.

The story involves a luxury safari done with all the trappings and peopled by a number of odd characters.  People die. The tale jerks on occasionally buttressed by observations by the African staff on the eccentricities of the Europeans.   The plot is complicated and intriguing. It will keep you guessing, but the intrepid police inspector works it out in the end.

Aside from the plot, Huxley’s characters discuss the plight of rhinos, “poachers kill many rhinos so soon there will be none left alive.”  How prescient?  Note that this book and thus this sentiment was written in 1937.   The characters also debate the validity of big game hunting noting that a man with a high-powered rifle has a distinct advantage over a lion just resting after supper.  They wonder whether the undertaking is worthwhile, or even ethical.  Again, it is interesting to note that these types of discussions figured in Huxley’s Kenya ninety years ago.

I enjoyed the mystery and give it an A.

Implausible Kenyan Story?

 

Review of Rare Earth by Davis Bunn, Bethany House, 2012.

    I seek out books set in Kenya and this one is, sort of. The author takes great liberties with geography and facts. (Okay, it is fiction so he can do this). He uses place names, but little is where it ought to be. Same with tribes. He places Ndebele people in Kenya, They are from Zimbabwe; also Angola appears as Kenya’s neighbor.  The author posits that the Luo people come from near what “the English call Kilimanjaro.” Wrong on two counts. Luos live nowhere near the mountain.  And, although the English may call it Kilimanjaro, that is what the local people named it.  Kilimanjaro means mountain of coldness in Swahili. Luos also end up in one of the camps, north of Elgon, again hundreds of miles from their homeland. Interestingly, for the sake of the story, Mt. Elgon erupts. That and drought cause thousands to flee to camps. Bunn calls them refugee camps, but they are really camps for internally displaced persons. But he needs them to be refugee camps so he can invoke a UN presence, and a shadowy American mercenary outfit.

    Another nitpick: the author continually refers to the heat, even at dawn, in Nairobi and the highlands near Elgon. Come on! Those regions are over a mile high. They are rarely tropically hot.  

    The overly dramatic plot revolves finally around the title – the discovery and corruption around deposits of rare earth.  The Chinese and corrupt Kenyans figure in the theft, coverup and violence that the hero, operating secretly on behalf of the U.S. government with the connivance of Israelis and Kenyan elders, finally uncovers and resolves. It is a bit of a stretch.

    I give the book a C-.  Nice try, the plot was passable, but the setting needed to be more accurate.